Section I

Freedom’s Sons
by H. A. Covington
©Copyright 2012 by Harold A. Covington
Acknowledgements
It has been said that any novel which does not require at least two years of
the author’s life to produce is not worth reading. This one required just that. I
began it on Thanksgiving Day of 2010, and put the last finishing touches on the
manuscript exactly two years later, on Thanksgiving Day of 2012, a little more
than two weeks after the date of what will probably be the last American national
election in the traditional sense of the term. It is my belief that November 6th, 2012,
marked the transition of the United States to a one-party state, and that history will
record that date as the end of the U.S.A. as we today understand the concept. Like
September 4th, 476—the day when the last Roman emperor abdicated his throne
and which scholars officially assign as the day Rome finally fell—no one noticed
at the time. But a once-great empire has fallen nonetheless.
It would be impossible, as well as dangerous, for me to acknowledge by
name everyone who has helped me in the writing and production of this book. We
live in a time when we are witnessing the birth of a nascent dictatorship in the
United States, and any list of names I entered here would be an invitation to
vicious and paranoid victimization of those without whom this book could not
have come into being. I will not repay in such a manner the men and women who
have given without stint of their time, their money, their proofreading and
technical expertise, and their critical assistance in order to make this book a reality.
You all know who you are. There is nothing I can say, except thank you.
-H. A. Covington
Seattle
This book is dedicated to the everlasting memory of the land
of hope and glory that was Rhodesia.
Glossary of Northwest Acronyms and Terms
N. B. This glossary also applies to the previous four Northwest novels: A Distant
Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, The Brigade, and The Hill of the Ravens. Certain terms may
not appear in all of the books.
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God—Christian hymn written by Martin Luther. The
national anthem of the Northwest American Republic.
Active Service Unit—The basic building block of the NVA paramilitary structure.
Generally speaking, an active service unit was any team or affinity group of
Northwest Volunteers engaged in armed struggle against the United States
government. The largest active service units during the War of Independence were
the flying columns (q.v.) that moved across the countryside in open insurrection.
These could sometimes number as many as 75 or even 100 men. More usual was
the urban team or crew ranging from four or five to no more than a dozen
Volunteers. After a unit grew larger than seven or eight people, the logistics of
movement and supply and also the risk of betrayal reached unacceptably high
levels, and the cell would divide in two with each half going its separate way.
Command and coordination between the units was often tenuous at best. The
success and survival of an active service unit was often a matter of the old Viking
adage: "Luck often enough will save a man, if his courage hold."
Aztlan—A semi-autonomous province of Mexico consisting of the old American
states of southern and western Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, parts of
Colorado, and southern California, below a line roughly parallel with the Mountain
Gate border post.
BATFE—Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and Explosives division of the United
States Treasury Department. Used by the government in Washington D.C. to
suppress many early right wing and racial nationalist groups and individuals.
Unlike its more sophisticated counterpart the FBI, BATFE seldom resorted to such
things as bribery, fabrication, or forgery to get convictions. All brawn and no brain,
BATFE simply smashed their way into the homes of dissidents such as Kenyon
Bellew and David Koresh and started shooting. Many of their agents later became
Fatties when the FATPO (q.v.) superceded the old ATF organization at the
beginning of the War of Independence. BATFE was declared a criminal
organization by Parliament and any surviving members are subject to arrest, trial,
and punishment if apprehended.
The Beast—Term similar in meaning to ZOG (q.v.) used initially by Christian
Identity people to describe the federal government of the United States and the
Zionist, liberal power structure in general. The expression later came into more
widespread use among the Northwest American Republic's non-CI population.
Break Bad—An incident or encounter between the NVA and federal forces or
other enemy agencies that turned violent.
Bremer Wall—Heavy concrete berm, portable and lowered into place by a crane,
used by the Americans to fortify police stations, federal buildings, FATPO
barracks, Green Zones, etc. Also used extensively by American occupation forces
in conquered Middle Eastern countries.
Brigade—In the paramilitary organization of the Northwest Volunteer Army, a
loose combination of all of the partisan units assigned to a specific geographic
area. In the larger cities of the Homeland such as Seattle, Portland or Spokane
there might be as many as two or three brigades, each operating independently of
the others, so that a single catastrophic betrayal or federal assault could not wipe
out the NVA in that metropolitan area. A brigade could comprise as many as two
or three dozen active service units of various kinds and strengths, including
technical, supply, and support teams. Some of the smaller brigades covering larger
and more rural areas only had a few units. In actual practice there was always an
immense amount of confusion and overlap in membership and function between
units. As is the case with any conflict, nothing about the War of Independence was
ever as neatly cut and dried as the Republic's history books have portrayed.
BOSS—Bureau of State Security. The Northwest American Republic's political
police. The mission of BOSS may be summed up simply in the five words of its
motto: “We will never go back.” In The Hill of the Ravens Don Redmond
summarizes that mission when he says, “The revolution is forever. Our job is to
make sure of that.”
CI—Christian Identity. By the time of the writing of The Hill of the Ravens, the
predominant Christian religious movement in the Republic. The faith of Pastor
Richard Butler, Robert Miles, and many others among the founding fathers of the
Northwest American Republic. The essence of Christian Identity is the transfer of
God's Biblical covenant from the Jewish people to the Gentile or Aryan peoples
through the medium of the Christ's Passion and the Crucifixion. In most Christian
Identity sects this transfer is accompanied by a very complex (sometimes
downright tortuous) theological construct whereby white people are alleged to be
racial descendants of the Israelites of the Bible through the alleged wanderings of
the Lost Tribes through Europe, Denmark being descended from the tribe of Dan,
etc. However tenuous the historical and theological basis for Christian Identity,
there can be no doubt of the spiritual strength and personal integrity that the CI
faith imparts to its adherents. During the Time of Struggle and ever since, they
have been the very backbone of the Northwest nation.
Centcom—During the War of Independence, Centcom was the central command
authority of the American occupation forces, consisting of representatives from the
executive and judicial branches of government, the FBI, Justice Department,
Department of Homeland Security, etc.
Chug-Chug—Homemade mortar, often of unusual caliber, used by the NVA to
attack fortified federal positions and Green Zones.
Code Duello—The official protocols and procedures governing dueling within the
Republic, administered by the National Honor Court. The purpose of the Code
Duello is to make sure that the ultimate sanction for personal misbehavior remains
available to all the Republic's citizens, but only under very clear and formally
recognized conditions. Ref. the Old Man: “One of the problems under ZOG was
that there was no longer any penalty attached to being an asshole. There needs to
be.”
Come Home—To immigrate to the Northwest American Republic. Since the NAR
is the Homeland of all Indo-European peoples, a white immigrant is considered to
have Come Home.
Daryl and His Other Brother Daryl—Defamatory term used by certain white
migrants to the Homeland during pre-revolutionary times to denote white people
born in rural areas of the Northwest. Considered rude, boorish, and highly
discouraged by the Party both before and since the revolution.
DHS—Department of Homeland Security. One of the many overlapping federal
political police agencies created under Bush II as part of the suspension of the
United States Constitution and the abrogation of American civil liberties that took
place following the events of September 11, 2001. The Department of Homeland
Security seems to have done little during the time of the revolution beyond adding
to the confusion.
DM –Drooling moron. Defamatory term used by certain white migrants during the
pre-revolutionary times to denote white people born in rural areas of the Northwest
Homeland. Always frowned upon and discouraged by the Party. Several legal
cases are now before the National Honor Court to decide whether “DM” is to be
considered a killing word or not.
E & E—Escape and evasion. Associated with General Order Number Eight, a.k.a.
the “Feets Don't Fail Me Now” order. When an operation went bad, or when
confronted with a federal ambush, extreme danger, or overwhelming enemy
numbers, every NVA Volunteer had a personal escape and evasion plan, a series of
refuges and safe houses to which they would flee and from which they would
subsequently regroup. The underlying rationale of General Order Number Eight
was the ancient one of all guerrilla forces: He who fights and runs away, lives to
fight another day.
E-Piece—Throwaway handgun used for close-in assassination work, usually of
small caliber and cheap manufacture, which could be discarded afterwards without
the loss of an expensive heavy-caliber weapon such as a Glock or a Colt .44.
Ex Gladio Libertas—The motto of the Northwest Volunteer Army, and later of
the Northwest American Republic itself as an acknowledgement of the origin of
the state. Literally translated: Freedom comes from the sword.
FATPO—Federal Anti-Terrorist Police Organization. A body of special auxiliary
police officers recruited by the United States government to suppress the
revolution in the Pacific Northwest, after the FBI and local authorities had clearly
lost control and it was not deemed politically expedient to use the regular military
in a significant role. FATPOs were mostly recruited from discharged members of
the United States military, local police departments, and from both sides of the bars
within the American empire's immense prison system. FATPOs were given a short
but intensive training campaign at Fort Bragg combining counterinsurgency,
commando and SWAT-team style tactics, along with heavy political indoctrination
in diversity, multiculturalism, etc. Nominally subject to the Department of
Homeland Security and the Justice Department, but in reality the government in
D.C. was far away, and a blind eye was turned. Local FATPO commanders had a
blank check and more or less operated as independent warlords in their districts,
above the law so long as they produced a plentiful white body count. Discipline
and control from Centcom was patchy at best, accountability was nil, atrocities
frequent, media reporting of those atrocities almost non-existent, and any serious
military purpose or strategy quickly disappeared. The FATPOs in short order
became nothing more than gangs of brutal gun thugs devoted to the bloody
suppression of the NVA and any white citizen of the Northwest whom they so
much as suspected might be sympathetic to the NVA. Strict policies of affirmative
action and mandatory diversity were applied, and at any given time the force was
only about 35 percent white and perhaps 25 percent white male. There were an
unknown but significant percentage of lesbian and homosexual sadists who mainly
operated in the intelligence units of FATPO as interrogators, and who earned
themselves a reputation as some of the most cruel and vicious torturers in the
history of human tyranny.
FBI—Federal Bureau of Investigation. The American secret police. Still extant,
although now less involved in Northwest affairs than their rivals of the Office of
Northwest Recovery (q.v.) Declared a criminal organization by Parliament after
independence. Any member of the FBI or anyone assisting the FBI is liable to
arrest, trial, and punishment under the laws of the Republic.
Flying Column—During the War of Independence, an independent unit of
partisans numbering from 30 to 100 Volunteers. These guerrilla units were usually
based in rural areas throughout the Pacific Northwest, and operated in the
countryside and small towns. They were highly mobile and conducted operations
against the American forces, against the means of production, and cleared their
operational areas of American law enforcement, judicial, and governmental
institutions to make way for the Republic's courts, police, and government.
Because of the activities of the flying columns, the United States eventually lost
control of the countryside almost completely and could maintain its authority only
in the cities, and there only through repressive force. There were over thirty flying
columns during the course of the War of Independence. The most famous among
them were the Olympic Flying Column (Cmdt. Thomas J. Murdock); the Port
Townsend Flying Column (Cmdt. John C. Morgan); the Hayden Lake Flying
Column (Cmdt. O.C. Oglevy); The Barbary Pirates (Arcata and Eureka, California
district, Cmdt. Phil McDevitt); the Sawtooth Flying Column (Cmdt. Winston
Wayne); the Corvallis Flying Column (Cmdt. Billy Basquine); the Montana
Regulators (Cmdt. Jack Smith); and the Ellensburg Flying Column (Cmdt. David
“Bloody Dave” Leach).
Goots—Derogatory and defamatory term used by native-born white people in the
Northwest for racially conscious Aryan settlers who came into the Homeland
during pre-revolutionary times. Origin unknown but possibly originated with
Seattle disc jockey Ray Sheckstein.
Green Zone—Heavily fortified and secured federal or military headquarters area,
sometimes encompassing several square miles. Green Zones were used as bases of
operations and administration for American occupation forces in the Middle East
and in the Pacific Northwest.
GUBU—Grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented. Slang term used to
describe most activities of the Aryan resistance movement prior to the advent of
the Northwest Migration concept, and regrettably for some time after that as well.
Gun Bunny—Adolescent female Northwest Volunteer or associate of the NVA. A
number of these young women distinguished themselves in combat, intelligence,
and support roles during the War of Independence.
GW—Kinetic energy firearms named after the renowned Texas gunsmith and
engineer Gary Wilkerson, who invented a kinetic energy plate whereby the bullet
is not propelled by a gunpowder-charged cartridge, but by a small kinetic energy
charge from a metal power grid in the receiving group or bolt assembly of the
weapon. Wilkerson KE technology is the basis for most NDF (q.v.) small arms.
Hats or Hat Squad—Semi-derogatory, pre-revolutionary term used by nativeborn white Northwesterners for Aryan settlers who answered the Old Man's call for
migration. Refers to the eventual adoption of the fedora hat as the badge or insignia
for Northwest settlers, at first of the Christian Identity faith, then later on the
practice spread to migrants of all faiths.
It Takes A Village—Slang term for the Federal Child Protection and Welfare Act,
passed during the first term of President Hillary Clinton. Basically, a form of
legalized kidnapping of white children for purposes of social engineering and
federal revenue enhancement. The name comes from a book written in the 1990s
by Ms. Clinton when she was co-president. Based on the precedent of the Elian
Gonzales case of 2000, the act gave the federal government the power to obtain
legal custody over any child deemed to be “at risk” from any “undesirable or
inappropriate home environment,” terms which could, of course, mean whatever
the local U.S. Attorney said they meant, and then place such children elsewhere. In
actual practice the act was used to take advantage of the scarcity of healthy white
infants and young children available for adoption by the wealthy, due to the
declining white birth rate in the early 21st century. The only children deemed to be
at risk under the act were white, from poor or politically incorrect families.
Placement involved an adoption bond from the adopting parents, which could
range from $100,000 for older children to as high as a million dollars for a healthy,
blond-haired and blue or green-eyed female infant.
Longview Conference—The conference wherein the United States agreed to
withdraw from the areas of the Northwest Homeland deemed to be
“administratively untenable,” i.e. effectively under NVA control. At that point in
time this consisted of the states of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, parts of western
Montana, and most of Wyoming.
NAR—Northwest American Republic. Nation established as a worldwide home
for all persons of unmixed Aryan, that is to say white, non-Semitic, European
descent. The Northwest American Republic presently consists of the entire states
of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming as well as hefty chunks of northern
California, western Montana, Alberta, and British Columbia.
National Socialism—The racial and political world view (Weltanschaung in
German) of the philosopher, soldier, and statesman Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).
NBA—Northwest Broadcasting Authority. State body in charge of all broadcast
communications and entertainment in the Northwest American Republic.
NDF—Northwest Defense Force. The combined land, sea, air and space
commands of the NAR military. All male citizens of the Republic are required to
serve in the NDF for a minimum of two years of active duty plus reserve
requirements up until age 50.
NLS—National Labor Service. There is no welfare as such in the Northwest
American Republic. Neither is there any unemployment. If no private sector jobs
are available in a particular field or locality, the Labor Service steps in to provide
employment, usually on public works of various kinds. Many Northwest workers
choose to work for the NLS voluntarily.
NVA—Northwest Volunteer Army. Formed on October 22nd in Coeur d’Alene,
Idaho, in response to the murder of the Singer family. Predecessor to the NDF.
OBA—Old Believers Association. The official NAR organization of non-Christian
religious groups including Asatru, the proto-NS Nordic Faith Movement, and some
elements of Wicca and Druidic cultism.
Old Man—Early advocate of Northwest Migration and independence. Helped
found the Party (q.v.) and served as a convenient figurehead for the independence
movement during the War of Independence, although he always considered his
role in the revolution to be greatly exaggerated. Served two terms as State
President and was able to stabilize and consolidate the gains of the revolution, but
was effectively removed from power by President Patrick Brennan and the
Pragmatic Tendency in Parliament because he was thought to be a dangerously
radical relic of the past. Served for many years President Emeritus of the
Northwest Republic and living in seclusion. Suffers from dementia praecox due to
his advanced age and is generally confused and incoherent. Has issues with ducks.
[See The Hill of the Ravens.]
ONR—The United States Office of Northwest Recovery. Covert agency of the
United States government devoted to the long-term goal of returning the Northwest
Republic to the United States and Canada respectively. Regularly conducts
assassinations, sabotage, and other subversive activities within the Northwest
American Republic.
On the Bounce—NVA slang term for being on the run from the American police
and military.
Operation Strikeout—Twelve years after the Longview Conference the United
States and Canada, in conjunction with the United Nations, launched what they
believed to be a surprise attack against the Northwest Republic, intending to reconquer the Pacific Northwest and return the Homeland to American imperial rule.
Due to superior intelligence on the part of BOSS (q.v.) and the War Prevention
Bureau (q.v.) the attack was not the surprise that the Pentagon thought it would be.
The Americans and Canadians were decisively defeated in a campaign lasting 46
days and large sections of northern California, Alberta, British Columbia and
Alaska were added to the Republic's territory.
The Party—The fighting revolutionary Party of Northwest independence founded
by the Old Man, once a sufficient number of racially aware migrants had arrived in
the Homeland to effect the socio-political demographic change necessary to make
such a Party feasible. Although the Party was comprised mostly of people who
were native-born in the Northwest, it was made possible by the influx of racially
aware migrants who listened to the Old Man's call and heeded it. Based upon the
principles of National Socialism as expressed in the Cotswolds Declaration of 1962
and the Ten Principles of National Socialist Thought, yet offering a broad program
of tolerance and participation for all Aryan religious and political tendencies, the
Party provided the political leadership for the revolution, while the NVA provided
the military capability.
Resurrection Shuffle—NVA term for going on the run, evading the Federal
forces.
Rockwell, Commander George Lincoln (1918-1967)—American National
Socialist leader. Founder of the American Nazi Party and the World Union of
National Socialists.
Senior Citizens’ Quality of Life Act—Passed during Hillary Clinton’s second
term as president. Allowed the euthanasia of elderly people in hospitals and
nursing homes who, in the opinion of their physician, were “unlikely ever to
achieve any quality of life or ability to live unassisted.” The physician was
required to consult with the senior’s family before administering the fatal injection
of sodium pentothal, or “hot shot,” but these very broad parameters led to
widespread abuse by physicians who wanted to lighten their workloads or who
were susceptible to bribes from family members, and by families anxious to gain
inheritance and insurance benefits. The vast majority of elderly people thus legally
euthanized were white.
Shock and Awe—A customary tactic for NVA partisans lying in wait to ambush
federal troops, police, news media, or other enemy personnel. The concealed
Volunteers would suddenly explode in a precisely aimed, concentrated hail of
gunfire on full automatic or other rapid fire technique, using armor piercing
bullets, rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) etc. The object was to inflict as much
damage as possible in the opening seconds of an encounter, disorienting and
disabling enemy reaction, before a rapid withdrawal under cover of smoke
grenades or other stratagems. Also known as the Mad Minute.
Spuckies—Derogatory and defamatory term used by local white people in the
Northwest to denote racially conscious white settlers who came into the Homeland
during pre-revolutionary times. Origin of this term unknown.
SS—Special Service. The NAR and the Party’s élite military formation. Drawn
from the top achievers of all the NDF branches, with naval, air, and space mobile
wings. Highly trained and equipped with the most advanced equipment, the SS
deliberately follows the traditions of its historic namesake of the Third Reich. The
corps seeks to erase all differences and divisions of class, religion, and nationality,
creating a true Aryan band of brothers. For this purpose, extensive political and
racial education based on the principles of National Socialism is part and parcel of
SS training and qualification.
Stukach—A Russian term meaning informer, dating from the time of Stalin and
the hideous purges of the 1930s. How exactly this term entered the lexicon of the
Northwest American Republic is not certain. When applied to the family or person
of a citizen, it is considered the ultimate insult, along with the words whigger and
attorney. All three are considered to be killing words, i.e. prima facie casus belli
under the law of the Republic for a duel to the death if the parties involved cannot
be reconciled by formal procedures under the Code Duello.
Take The Gap—Broadly speaking, to Come Home. To immigrate to the
Northwest American Republic. In practice, to “take the gap” generally connotes an
illegal entry into the Homeland from the United States, Aztlan, Canada, or
sometimes by air. “Taking the gap” often involves physically running the border
under gunfire and pursuit.
Tickle—An operation of the Northwest Volunteer Army against a federal or
Zionist target.
Third Section (Threesec)—Intelligence, counterintelligence, security and special
operations department of the Party prior to 10/22 and during the War of
Independence. Created by Matt Redmond, who served as Threesec's first director
until his death. Organizational ancestor of both BOSS (q.v.) and War Prevention
Bureau (q.v.).
Volunteer—A male or female soldier of the Northwest Volunteer Army.
Whigger—“White nigger.” A defamatory term for whites during the prerevolutionary time who aped the mannerisms, behavior, and subculture of blacks.
Considered to be a killing word in the NAR, i.e. sufficient casus belli for a duel to
the death if no compromise can be reached between the parties involved.
Whizz-Bang—Homemade rocket used by the NVA to attack fortified positions.
Woodchuck—Originally a term with defamatory and derogatory connotations
used by Aryan settlers in the Homeland to denote those born in the Northwest,
especially in rural areas. Now transmuted and claimed as a proud and honorable
designation by those born in the Homeland.
WPB—The NAR’s War Prevention Bureau. A covert agency designed to prevent
the necessary military, political, and psychological conditions from developing
within the United States, Aztlan, or anywhere else that might lead to an existential
military threat to the existence of the Northwest Republic, through the use of
targeted assassination and other black ops. The WPB is also responsible for
tracking down and liquidating spies and traitors to the Northwest Republic,
including informers and traitors from the time of the War of Independence. Their
motto in German is “Alles bekennings wird abgerechnet.” (Translation: “All
accounts will be settled.")
ZOG—Zionist Occupation Government. Term originally created by the obscure
National Socialist writer Eric Thomson in the 1970s. Strictly construed, ZOG
means the federal government of the United States. In actual usage it is a much
more all-embracing term meaning the System, the Establishment, the generic
"them" used by oppressed peoples to denote the federal tyrant.
Prologue
Remember, Remember, the First of November
(10 days after Longview)
They were the men with a vision, the men with a cause,
The men who defied their oppressor’s laws,
The men who traded their chains for guns.
Born into slavery, they were Freedom’s Sons.
-Irish song from the Easter 1916 Rebellion
At 7:30 sharp on the morning of November the first, an artillery shell from
an eight-inch howitzer ripped through the air with a sound like tearing cardboard
from the Washington side of the Columbia River. The shell crashed into the Union
positions along the Oregon side, and vaporized a mobile home business office
standing on a side street behind the scorched and crumpled ruins of the Portland
Expo Center. The shell blasted dirt and shrapnel through the air, and drove a flying
four-inch nail into the buttocks of United States Marine Corps lieutenant Abdul
Malik Johnson.
“Muthafukka!” screamed Johnson in pain and rage. He turned to his fellow
African-American lying in a prone position beside him, Sergeant Alvin Pettibone,
who was wearing the blue-black uniform of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Police
Organization. “Racist muthafukkas done shot me in de ass!” he howled. Then he
saw that Pettibone’s head was gone. “Fuck! I tole you not to look up when you
gots incoming, fool!”
The Washington side of the river began to flash and smoke, and thunder
rolled across the water like a gigantic hollow drumroll as the rest of the Nationalist
guns and rocket launchers opened up. Great geysers of concrete, asphalt, brick and
wood leaped into the air all along Marine Drive, and projectiles plowed craters into
the golf courses and parks where the Union artillery was dug in. The battle for
Portland had begun.
***
On October 22nd, the Northwest American Republic officially came into
existence as a homeland for all white people the world over. The Treaty had been
signed five years to the day after the first open revolt in arms against the United
States since 1861 occurred in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
The historic document was the culmination of ten weeks of increasingly
strained negotiations at the peace conference in Longview, Washington. There had
been a breakthrough at the last minute, when it had appeared that the talks were
about to collapse, and the American delegation had signed the Treaty—some said
at gunpoint by the delegation from the Northwest Volunteer Army. There had
apparently been some kind of fracas prior to the signing, although the stories
coming out of Longview were muddled. [See A Mighty Fortress by the same
author.] Under the terms of the Longview Treaty, President Chelsea Clinton had
ordered the withdrawal of all American legal, military, and governmental
personnel from the territories in the Northwest designated by the treaty,
specifically the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and the western
third of Montana. Almost all of the American forces were now in the process of
complying.
Here in Portland, though, USMC General Delmar Partman, a buzz-cut
Alabamian and Christian fundamentalist of the Zionist and neoconservative 700
Club variety, had repudiated the Treaty. He refused to evacuate the City of Roses
and hand it over to the new government. For the first time in the history of the
Corps, a senior Marine officer mutinied against an order from his commander in
chief. Partman delivered a long and meandering speech on live television just after
the signing of the Longview Treaty, wherein he stated that his conscience would
not allow him to hand over his command to “the forces of darkness and hatred.”
He alone would stand up for “the conscience of history and the soul of America”
by declining to deliver sovereign U.S. territory to “a gang of back-shooting white
trash criminals.” Partman had then closed his TV address with an impromptu
rendition of Jesus Loves the Little Children. The world was treated to the sight of a
tall, leathery soldier in dress blues, his chest full of decorations, with tears
streaming down his face as he sang
“Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world!”
No one in the media and no one in either the liberal or the neoconservative
political élites seemed to find this behavior odd, nor did they see any irony in the
fact that Partman was about to demonstrate Christ’s love for all the little children
of the world by sending tens of thousands of men, women, and children of all races
to their death in a brutal battle for a city that now legally belonged to someone else.
Or if they did, they didn’t mention the fact. There was already a move afoot on the
part of elements in both the Democrat and Republican parties to draft Partman as
their nominee for President in the next national elections.
In the first official directive issued on behalf of the government of the new
Northwest Republic, the Council of State—up until ten days ago the NVA Army
Council—granted long-time Party activist and NVA veteran Carter Wingfield
command of the new nation’s growing armed forces west of the Cascade
mountains, then ordered him to dig Partman out of Portland and enforce the Treaty.
The Council of State’s temporary chairman, Henry “Red” Morehouse, issued a
brief public comment: “One hundred and fifty years or so ago there was another
American military man out here in the Northwest who thought he would use a
campaign against the natives as a springboard for the presidency. His name was
Custer.”
At about 7:10 a.m. that morning, across the river from Portland on the
Vancouver, Washington side, Carter Wingfield stood on the hood of a Humvee
with a pair of field glasses, studying the American positions over in Oregon, or
what he could see of them from the edge of the Interstate 5 bridge. The occasional
bullet whined lazily over from the American side, followed by a chatter of
automatic weapons as the Northwest Defense Force troopers on the I-5 bridge
responded and tried to bag the sniper wherever he was hiding in the rubble from
last night’s artillery barrage. Wingfield ignored the potshots. The morning was
cold and crisp and bright, for which Wingfield was thankful. The Pacific
Northwest is a paradise on earth at any season whenever the sky is clear. At least
those of his men who had to die today would do so in the sunshine of their own
Homeland.
Men were already dying. Below him and to his right across the river,
Wingfield could see the still smoldering ruins of the Portland Expo Center and the
burning buildings on Hayden Island, which had been destroyed by the Nationalist
guns and mortars during the previous night’s barrage. Similar wreckage still
burned and cast a pall of smoke into the air from behind him on the Washington
side, the work of the American artillery. The Union troops hiding in the abandoned
docks and warehouses and along the streets of the little island had all been driven
off, the survivors scrambling across to the Oregon shore on motor launches and
rubber rafts. Nationalist soldiers were now dug in all along the island shore firing
at anything that moved in Oregon. Using his field glasses, through the smoke and
the haze Wingfield could see the improvised barricades, sandbagged machine gun
nests, and the concrete berms with which the enemy had blocked off the south ends
of both twin suspension bridges. He could also see the federals dug in to the
southeast, along Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard toward their primary base at
Portland International Airport. In the further distance, across North Columbia
Boulevard, the city proper began.
Wingfield was a lean, middle-aged man with a swept-back ducktail haircut
who looked like an evil Elvis. Rank hath its privileges; in a newly formed army
where most of the soldiers had so far been issued only bits and pieces of uniform
items, and where many still wore the civilian clothes in which they had just fought
a five-year guerrilla insurrection against the United States, he was dressed in one
of the few complete Northwest Defense Force uniforms available so far. It was a
fatigue outfit consisting of tiger-striped camouflage and a sharp-billed Alpine cap
with brown laced boots. In his kit, Wingfield also had an NDF garrison uniform in
dark olive green, with tan trousers, high polished boots, and a billed cap. It looked
remarkably like a British officer’s turnout from World War One, since the pattern
on which it had been based by an aesthetically minded design committee.
The camos bore a blue, white and green Northwest Tricolor flag patch on the
right shoulder. Over the buttoned right shirt pocket and on the headgear was a
silver embroidered World War Two Wehrmacht eagle and swastika patch. The
NDF’s Special Service élite units had been wearing the eagle on their tunics and
old Germanic SS runes on their collar tabs ever since the Party and the NVA had
emerged from underground at the time of the ceasefire back in July, before the
Longview Conference. Only yesterday, the Christian delegates to the
Constitutional Convention now meeting in Olympia had been protesting against
the eagle, wanting to substitute some kind of krinkeljammer that would not offend
the sensibilities of paleoconservatives in their ranks who yearned for the 1950s.
They could not break themselves of the habit of thinking of themselves as
Americans, and they still mistakenly equated Hitler and National Socialism with
Communism. Since many of the soldiers in the field and the bulk of the preLongview NVA veterans were outright National Socialists, or at least had NS
tendencies, this was a hard sell.
Finally, the Convention chairman, General Frank Barrow, newly arrived
from the treaty conference at Longview, had worked out a compromise in which
the Christians accepted a trade: the military got their eagle and swastika in
exchange for adoption of a hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress, as the
national anthem of the new Northwest American Republic. It was the song that had
played on the loudspeakers as the first legal Tricolor flag had been raised over
Longview ten days before.
Facing the NDF, and concentrated in the city of Portland itself and around
the airport, was a motley crew of Unionists. The core group, Partman’s first line,
was the United States Marine Corps Northwest Task Force, consisting of elements
mostly from the Third Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton. But it also
contained bits and pieces of everybody and everything else that the United States
government had been able to scrape up back in January. The task force had first
occupied the city after a single night’s running street battle between the NVA, the
Portland police, and the Federal Anti-Terrorist Police Organization had destroyed
sections of the city and left over a thousand cops, FBI and other secret police, and
officers of the FATPO dead. [See The Brigade by the same author.] Now most of
them were refusing to leave, following Partman’s mutinous lead, although there
was a steady trickle of deserters slipping over the Columbia as white cops, soldiers
and Marines went AWOL to join their racial brothers in the Nationalist army.
There were approximately 8,000 United States Marines and other active duty
U.S. military presently under Partman’s command, from every branch of the
service, including a U.S. Army Ranger battalion, part of a Stryker brigade, and
several artillery batteries containing at least twenty-odd fieldpieces; NDF
intelligence had confirmed 19, but there were almost certainly more deployed
inside the city. In addition to the regular military personnel, Partman had under
him about 12,000 members of FATPO, well armed and in theory highly trained,
although of dubious personal quality and moral fiber, as well as about 4,000
Portland cops, Oregon State Police, and odds and sods of the Oregon National
Guard, mostly non-whites of various kinds. Many of the white National Guard
officers had deserted or had gone over to the new government.
Finally, Partman theoretically commanded an unknown number of ragbag,
lightly armed and ill-disciplined “local militia” ranging from anti-NVA Christian
and Unionist vigilante groups like the Loyal Americans’ League and the Oregon
Watchmen, down to armed contingents of the Portland chapters of the Crips, the
Bloods, the Salvadorean MS-13, and the Asian Ghost Shadows gang. Plus he had
virtually every black, brown, yellow, and sodomitic person remaining in Portland,
armed with whatever weapons they could lay hands on.
On paper at least, the NDF had the enemy outnumbered. Behind Wingfield
on the Washington side of the river were 45,000 troops of what was officially
designated the First Army, including tanks and artillery that had been captured or
voluntarily handed over by defecting United States soldiers from Fort Lewis and
other military installations. The Nationalist General Robert Gair had moved on
Portland up Interstate 5 from Salem in the south, with 16,000 men of the Second
Army, and his forces had pushed into the city as far as Highway 26, thus far
meeting with little resistance. Gair’s men were now sheltering along the south side
of Powell Boulevard, ready to begin the assault on Wingfield’s orders at 7:30.
General Robert DiBella and his Third Army, mostly from Seattle, had crossed the
newly repaired Longview Bridge on October 30th with 14,000 NDF, including
2,000 Special Service or SS men, the closest the emerging new Republic had to an
élite force. At Clatskanie, Oregon, his force had joined with a smaller corps of
8,000 men under General Zack Hatfield, commander of the famous Wild Bunch
guerrilla unit from the NVA days, bringing the Third Army up to around 22,000
troops assaulting Portland down Sunset Highway from the west, their major target
being Partman’s headquarters at City Hall on Fifth Avenue in downtown Portland.
Those 83,000 men were a fair-sized army, but there were more. Inside the
city itself, there were the two small but lethal NVA Portland Brigades commanded
by Commandants Billy Jackson and Tommy Coyle, the same men who had torn
Portland to shreds and sent the Unionists running back to the shelter of their
barracks in a panic-stricken rout back in January. Although there were still active
NVA crews operating in Canada, the Portland brigades were the only Northwest
rebel units inside the Republic that were still officially NVA instead of NDF, due
to the underground nature of their operations in a city still heavily occupied by the
Union. Nobody knew how they were deployed, including Wingfield, but he was in
contact with both NVA brigade commanders and he knew they were ready to move
on his signal at 7:30.
Some of the NDF’s troops were white soldiers who had deserted from the
American forces, army and police, and sometimes even from FATPO itself. They
were fairly young and fit, and passably trained. However, many more were either
middle-aged Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran veterans who, while willing, were out of
shape and out of practice, or else they were teenaged kids as young as 16. Some
were even younger, having lied about their ages. The officers and some of the SS
squads were Northwest Volunteers who had fought in the guerrilla war, but most
of them were summer soldiers, volunteers of both genders who had joined the
Northwest independence movement after the ceasefire in July when it emerged
from underground and at last they could be located by those who wanted to enlist.
Some had received only about, three weeks of very basic training indeed, provided
at impromptu camps set up around the Northwest in the weeks and months after
the announcement of negotiations and the ceasefire.
The NDF also included a large and increasing number of foreign volunteers
from all over what remained of the Western world, and some of them had military
experience, but they were hard to integrate with the North American units due to
language and other problems. They were formed into their own companies,
battalions, and brigades of the International Division, including the St. George
Brigade from England, the German Panzer Grenadiers, the Russian Archangel
Michael Brigade, the Italian and Spanish Blue Brigade, the Viking Brigade from
Scandinavia, the Scots Guards and the Irish Brigade, and the French and
Quebecois Brigade Charlemagne.
Feeding this number of men was a problem; the NDF had been forced to
confiscate stocks of canned goods and other foodstuffs from grocery store chains
up and down the coast and from the shops of Koreans and Arabs whose owners
had fled. Most Northwestern cities had only a week’s worth of food and other
supplies if over-the-road transport and resupply were cut off. With elements of the
American government already working to undermine President Clinton and the
Treaty and talking sanctions, just feeding the Northwest military was already
starting to cause hardship. The implications for the civilian population were even
worse; there were reports of runs on grocery stores and food hoarding from all over
the new Republic.
The NDF troops were armed with a miscellany of small arms and other
weapons. The bulk of them carried M16 variations, mostly M16A4s captured from
enemy armories or else taken off the dead bodies of FATPOs and cops during the
guerrilla war, but many also carried Kalashnikovs from large arms shipments sent
to the NVA and NDF by certain sympathetic parties in Russia and parts unknown.
The Nationalists had an adequate amount of ammunition for the moment, but a
pitched battle would gobble it up like popcorn, and their ammo resupply was by no
means certain. Artillery shells and rockets were especially limited; the coming day
would use up almost all the NDF’s reserves. The retreating American forces were
taking all their weapons and supplies with them or else destroying them rather than
hand them over to the NDF. One of the reasons the Nationalists needed to capture
Portland so badly, aside from political and morale considerations, was to seize the
enemy’s arms and supply dumps.
About 200 yards in front of Wingfield’s position stood the Interstate 5
bridge over the Columbia River. The twin I-5 bridge was about two thirds of a mile
long, a pair of identical conjoined steel truss bridges, three northbound and three
southbound lanes running side by side, that normally carried interstate traffic over
the river between Vancouver and Portland. On the Oregon end, the Americans had
installed formidable barricades of concrete Bremer walls, behind which were
unknown but significant numbers of Marines and U.S. Army Rangers. The
Nationalist army had to cross the river on the bridges; there simply wasn’t enough
aquatic transport to move all of them across, since the enemy’s artillery and
mortars had swept the Washington shore of all boats.
Besides the I-5, there were other bridges across the Columbia River into
Portland. There was the long and winding concrete I-205 bridge just upriver to the
east, as well as a trestle railway bridge just downriver to the west. These were now
the only way across for many miles; somehow, Wingfield had to get a whole army
over them and into the Union-occupied city, under fire, without them being
massacred and without the bridges being blown out from under them. He counted
on the simultaneous assault of the Second and Third Armies and the NVA forces
within the city to keep the bulk of Partman’s forces busy and tied down in place,
but forcing these narrow bridges in the face of entrenched opposition could only be
bloody.
Some days before, when it became obvious how the coming battle would
shape up and what role the bridges would play, a special NVA commando team
from within the city had captured and destroyed the diesel generator in the control
house on the center of the I-5 bridge, in order to stop Partman from raising the
midsection. The previous night, squads of NDF had occupied most of it almost to
the very end on the Portland side, where they now crouched behind the steel
stanchions, sandbagged emplacements, and anything concrete that could offer
cover, exchanging desultory fire with the Americans behind their own sandbags
and concrete Bremer walls. During the night, teams of NDF had conducted an
extended examination by flashlight, some of them swinging below the bridges on
rappelling lines, and they had confirmed that the Union forces had wired the
central load-bearing columns of all three bridges with heavy charges of explosives,
set to blow with radio-controlled detonators. The entire night had been spent in
locating the charges, disarming and removing them, rappelling men down under
the columns to remove them where necessary, sometimes under fire. Why the
supposedly experienced veteran commander General Partman had not given the
order to detonate the explosives once he realized they had been discovered
remained a mystery.
On the ground at Wingfield’s side stood a young man wearing an NDF
captain’s uniform, his adjutant and former son-in-law, Shane Ryan. “I guess now
we know why Partman didn’t blow the bridges before,” he said. “He wanted to
catch us coming across and blow all our asses into the river.”
“Yeah. He was being too damned clever for his own good,” drawled
Wingfield, sweeping the enemy shore with his field glasses. The South Carolina
Low Country where Wingfield had been born was still embedded in his speech
despite all the years he had now spent in Washington State.
“Didn’t he think we’d be smart enough to check the bridges out for booby
traps before we moved out?” wondered Ryan aloud.
Wingfield barked out a snarling and contemptuous laugh. “You heard him
on TV, Shane. He thinks we’re just a bunch of dumb-ass rednecks. Even after the
past five years, while we whipped everything the Americans could throw at us
down into jelly, he still holds us in contempt. These assholes still can’t believe
they’ve been beaten by ordinary working white folks who finally had enough of
their bullshit.”
“But why the hell didn’t Partman order the bridges blown once he realized
that we had found his explosives?” the young officer wondered. “What the hell is
he up to?”
“He wants us to attack across the bridges,” replied Wingfield. “He’s daring
us to do it. He’s got a strong defensive position and he thinks we can’t force it.
Even if we do get all the charges, he thinks he can still just shoot us down like fish
in a barrel when we try. It’s the same kind of hubris we’ve seen ever since this
started. That ridge-running bush ape just can’t believe we have the guts to go up
against him and his gyrenes head-on.”
“Is he right?” asked Shane. “I mean, can he hold us off? This looks like a
death trap to me.”
“Maybe. Fact is we’ve got no choice. It’s our land now, and he’s on it. We
gotta show him the door, and do it in front of the whole world. We have to prove
we ain’t just a bunch of back-shooting peckerwood thugs like he called us, that the
Northwest Republic is now a sovereign state, and we brook no insult or trespass
from buzz-cut red-white-and-blue dummocks. We always knew that one day it
would come to this. No more shoot-and-scoot. This time we throw down head on,
face to face.”
“It would be a real bonus if we can take the airport intact,” said Ryan. “No
holes in the tarmac.”
“Not sure how many people will be flying in and out, though, if those snakes
in Congress renege on the Treaty and impose sanctions,” replied the older man.
“Do we have any word on whether or not the enemy satellite surveillance is
active?” Ryan asked. “I really don’t like the idea of them being able to watch every
move we make over here. Wish to hell we could find some way to take those
goddamned spy satellites out.”
“I think after last night’s festivities, Partman definitely knows we’re here,”
replied Wingfield. “He don’t need no Eye In The Sky to tell him that. And yes,
they may be watching us now on laptops with satellite uplinks. If that’s the case
then there’s not much we can do about it. Nor for that matter can Partman. He’s
made a politically bad move here. For all his posturing on CNN and Fox News and
all his cheering section in Congress, he can’t expect any backup from his former
masters in Washington, D.C. They did everything they could to stall us and divert
us at Longview, but they wouldn’t have buckled and signed the Treaty in the end if
they didn’t understand that their whole ball of wax is about to go down, including
their precious goddamned Israel, and they have to let us go if they want to survive
with any of their power and privilege intact. The decision’s been made in the back
rooms of power, whether Partman accepts it or not. The United States can’t afford
the Northwest any more, and so they’re cutting us loose. Besides, all the
intelligence in the world doesn’t do you any good if your soldiers are crap. You
can’t drive a nail with a marshmallow. The human spirit is greater than any
machine, Shane. We’ve already beaten these bastards just by being here, it’s just
that buzz-cut jarhead over there is too stupid to get it.”
“Or he just wants to be president, and he doesn’t care how many more
people have to die so he can look good in the primaries,” said the young officer
bitterly.
“Well, let’s just make sure he doesn’t make it to the primaries,” replied
Wingfield with a scowl. The wireless phone set in his ear buzzed.
“The last disposal team is coming in off the 205, sir,” said a voice from the
phone in Wingfield’s ear. “Looks like one of our guys was hit. They’re heading
your way to get to the MASH.”
“Did they get all the charges?” asked Wingfield. “Never mind, I’m coming
down.” He jumped down and got into the Humvee, and the adjutant started the
vehicle and headed for the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital which had been
established in an abandoned aircraft hangar at Pearson Field on the Vancouver
side, as close to the I-5 bridge as they dared, in anticipation of the stream of
casualties that would be coming from across the bridge later in the day.
When they got to Pearson Field, an NDF sergeant in tiger stripes was
staggering off the back of a pickup truck, which had been re-painted flat gray with
a blue, white and green roundel on the doors and with a bright red cross in a white
circle on the hood. He was carrying a wounded comrade over his shoulders. An
NDF paramedic and a young, pretty blonde nurse in camos and a Red Cross
armband ran out the door of the hangar pushing a gurney. “Put him on here,”
commanded the nurse.
“He’s a she,” said the soldier from the bridge, helping the nurse ease the
unconscious body onto the gurney. “She was crawling to the edge of the bridge to
toss one of the charges into the river and one of their snipers hit her. For Christ’s
sake, help her!” he burst out.
“Do you know her blood type?” demanded the corpsman.
“A-positive,” came the reply.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, check her arm.” The medic quickly rolled up the girl’s right sleeve
and saw A+ written in black on the inside of her forearm, along with “Arnold, B.”
The NDF hadn’t been able to make up dogtags for its soldiers yet, and so most of
them wore their names and blood types inked on their bodies with Sharpies.
The paramedic said, “Kelly, start her on a plasma IV, then let’s get her in to
your dad.” The nurse quickly raised the IV rig over the gurney and hooked a
plastic bag over the hook.
Wingfield looked down at the wounded Volunteer while this was being
done, and he saw a single long blonde braid coming out from under the woman’s
cap. “Did this comrade not receive my order regarding no female personnel under
direct fire?” he demanded in exasperation.
“Yes sir, she did,” responded the sergeant wearily, “She just ignored it.
Don’t go too hard on her, sir. Brooke’s Mandingo.”
“Ah.” No one commented; they now knew that the bleeding woman on the
gurney was wearing the Northwest uniform and she had been out on that bridge
because she had been raped by blacks or Mexicans. No one knew how many
female Northwest Volunteers were Mandingo, nor did anyone ever try to compile
any statistics; it was something that was understood to be the case, but never
discussed. There was blood running down the left side of the sergeant’s camos, and
Wingfield saw that wasn’t all the girl’s, but was burbling out from beneath the
male trooper’s arm. “Looks like you stopped one yourself, sarge,” said Wingfield.
“What’s your name?”
“Art McBride, sir. It’s just a bee sting. A Dick Tracy special. Don’t worry
about it.”
“Bullshit,” said the young nurse as her companion wheeled the wounded
woman into the hangar. “Get your ass inside and let me look at that, troop. You’re
lucky, you’re getting in before the rush.”
“Wait a minute, I need to talk to him a bit, Nurse …”
“Shipman, sir. Kelly Shipman. I’m not a real nurse, I just learned a lot from
my dad. I guess I have a military rank, but nobody’s told me what it is. Take off
your shirt while you’re talking,” she ordered McBride, helping him off with the
bloodstained camo tunic.
“Did you get all the charges off the 205?” demanded Wingfield. “Which
lane were you on?”
“Northbound, sir. Shit!” The nurse had just slapped an alcohol-and-iodinesoaked gauze pad over the bullet graze. “Brooke and I got three between the
middle span and their first barricade. About twenty pounds of Semtex and a dozen
sticks of C4 apiece. They had them packed into hollowed-out holes right over the
section joins. They would have leveled the whole bridge, no question. Third
Section told us that’s all there was on northbound. If that was good intel, then we
got them all.” He held up three long, thin brass detonators with power bulbs
attached. “Pulled the dets, cut the strapping with tin snips and dropped the charges
in the drink.”
“How hot was it out on the bridge?” asked Wingfield.
“Not near as hot for us as it was in the southbound lanes. I think those are
Rangers on the 205, but whatever they are, the SS guys covered us pretty good and
made them keep their heads down. But one of them got Brooke, God damn him to
hell!”
“I was there, sir,” spoke up the driver of the pickup truck, a young man
wearing blue jeans and tiger-stripe camo shirt with SS tabs. “The sarge here carried
that girl a good quarter mile to our first barricade on the 205.”
“Well, we’re sort of engaged,” explained McBride. “I figured it was the
considerate thing to do for my bride-to-be.”
“He also went back for the last charge, and when the Rangers came up over
the barricade to try and stop him he killed two of them with a pistol,” the driver
added. “Captain Kannino said to tell you that if there’s any medals going for today,
these guys deserve two of them. He’s right.”
“Good man,” said Wingfield with an approving nod. “Well done, both of
you. How’s she looking?” The paramedic had come back out of the aircraft hangar.
“Not so good,” said the man. “Because she was in the prone position when
she was hit, the bullet got past her vest and into her chest cavity. She’s going on
the table now. Kelly, your dad wants you in there.”
“God, do we even have any real doctors yet in this so-called MASH?”
wondered Wingfield.
“We have at least one, sir,” replied the blonde. “My father, Doctor Edward
Shipman. I called him in Seattle and told him that we needed him, begged him to
come, and he came down. The NVA did our family a favor a while back. A Jew
did something real bad to me, and you guys took care of it. We’re grateful and we
owe you, and I was able to make my dad see that. He still won’t wear the uniform,
though. Can’t handle the eagle.” She escorted the wounded Sergeant McBride into
the hangar.
Wingfield scowled after her. “I’m sorry if my order to keep our female
comrades out of direct combat ruffled their feathers, and I know they’re all as
brave as lions or they wouldn’t be here, but dammit, Shane, I’m just one of these
old dinosaurs who doesn’t believe men should send women to do their fighting for
‘em!” he groused. “You of all people know I had two daughters in the Volunteers
back when it was necessary, and one of them died. I saw what losing Rooney did
to you, and I know what it did to me, what it still does to me every day. I’m sorry,
but I won’t inflict that grief on any other father or husband if I can help it. [See A
Distant Thunder by the author.] Now, I wonder if China is bothering to follow my
order, or has she done crept off to the line somewhere as well?”
“China might well disobey a general, but don’t worry, sir, she wouldn’t
disobey her father,” said Ryan. “You raised her too good a Christian to violate the
commandment.”
Wingfield sighed. “Shane, I know this isn’t the time or the place, but once
we get on top of things from the command post I intend to get my own ass over
that bridge and lead from the front, and you’ll be with me. We don’t know how
that’s going to play out, so I guess I better have a quick word I been meaning to
have with you now. I just want to tell you that whatever you and China decide to
do about your lives together in the future, if there is anything that’s gonna happen
there, then it’s all right with Racine and me.”
“I don’t know, Carter,” said Ryan shaking his head. “Uh, you know, we’re
…”
“Yeah, I know where my daughter spends her nights, and my wife damned
sure knows,” said Wingfield with a sour grin. “You know how we feel about that,
but we just got too much else to worry about right now.”
“Well, Chine and I have talked about the future, some,” Shane told him. “I
feel like I want us to get married, but I have to be really sure I’m doing it for the
right reasons, because I want her, not because in some creepy way I’m trying to
raise Rooney from the dead.”
“We get that. Well, I hope it works out for the two of you, son. Racine and
me both want to keep you in the family.”
Ryan looked at his watch. “Almost time, sir.”
“Right. Let’s get up in that control tower. That should give us a bird’s-eye
view. I want to watch the first shell hit.”
***
Frederick the Great once said “artillery lends dignity to what would
otherwise be a vulgar brawl,” and the pride of the fledgling NDF was their
captured or surrendered artillery and armor. The First Army was the proud owner
and operator of fourteen M198 155mm howitzers, twelve M110A1 self-propelled
203mm (8-inch) guns, three British 105mm light howitzers that no one had the
slightest idea where they’d come from, and six M109A6 self propelled 155s. The
M198s had a standard crew of nine men, but could make do with five in a pinch.
The M109s were designed for a crew of four and needed all four bodies.
Fortunately for the NDF, America’s endless wars in the Middle East had spat out
enough disgruntled white veterans from the artillery to provide gun crews for the
fieldpieces. It was a motley collection and scarcely equivalent to the standard
TO&E of an American infantry brigade, but it was the only heavy artillery the
NDF had. Gair’s Second and DiBella’s Third Army had nothing larger than
mortars and RPGs.
Then there were the rockets, on which Wingfield was placing more hope for
this particular mission, i.e. getting his 45,000 men across the river. By hook or
crook the First Army accumulated sixteen M270A1 70mm 12-rocket launchers and
eighteen M142 270mm HIMARS (High Mobility) launchers that only packed six
rockets, but those six were larger and had a longer range. Added to those were a
number of truck-mounted Katyusha rockets provided by the aforementioned
mysterious Russian sympathizers, as well as homemade weapons the NVA had
used during the guerrilla campaign, called whizz-bangs. Even the higher-tech
rockets were not precision weapons, but used as an area weapon, they could be
devastating, and one big heavy sustained blast was all Wingfield really needed—
just enough to keep the enemy’s heads down and get his first wave alive across the
bridges.
Then there were the NDF’s captured Stryker armored combat vehicles, M2
and M3 Bradleys with 25mm cannon, and even a few venerable Abrams M1 tanks.
Each of these vehicles had been repainted in flat battleship gray, with blue, white
and green roundels sprayed on them, or in some cases Iron Crosses in green or
blue. Wingfield was confident his men and their equipment could defeat the
Americans, if only he could get them across the river in one piece.
***
At 7:30, Wingfield stood in the airfield’s control tower and took a deep
breath. “Right, let’s get this show on the road.” He spoke into his phone. “Let ‘er
rip,” he said calmly. There was a long moment of silence, until a single M110 selfpropelled gun in Vancouver’s Esther Short Park on the 6th Street side fired the shell
that nailed Abdul Malik Johnson in the butt and took off Pettibone’s nappy head.
Then all hell broke loose from along the Washington side of the river.
Cannon, mortar and rocket fire ripped and slashed through the air and
slammed into the Oregon shore, flashing on impact and throwing up columns of
smoke and dust and debris. Partman’s guns responded and a few shells began
streaking overhead and crumping into Vancouver along 15th Street and
McLoughlin Boulevard. Partman’s gunners apparently thought the bulk of the
Nationalists were further back from the shoreline than they were, or else they were
overshooting due to bad intel and a lack of spotters. Wingfield watched some of
the shells hit far behind them. “If they got satellite surveillance it don’t seem to be
doing ‘em much good,” he commented. At any rate, they were missing the bulk of
the NDF troops who were dug into foxholes and hunkered down in buildings and
behind cover along the northern edge of the river.
All along the Lewis and Clark Highway, and along the shore across from
Hayden Island, a series of whistles blew loudly, piercing even the thunder of the
cannon and rocket fire. Around 22,000 armed men of the first assault wave rose
from their dugouts and from the cover of the buildings where they had sheltered,
and started walking. With few words they formed into files and began walking up
the on-ramps and across the bridges at a steady pace.
The men on the I-5 bridge had the shortest walk, but it was long enough. The
aging steel beams and columns of the suspension served as partial cover from
indirect fire, but also had a nasty tendency to send ricochets down into the
marching column. The men on the I-205 bridge had the longest walk, well over a
mile, and they were the most exposed to enemy fire because their bridge was much
more open, but the men on the railroad trestle bridge were at the greatest risk,
almost completely exposed to enemy fire. From the Oregon shore, audible even
over the crash of the artillery, came the popping of American small arms.
Partman’s Marines were opening up on the men on the bridges.
The Northwest Republic’s new army marched only in the right lanes,
leaving the left lanes clear for medevac vehicles that scooted up and down to pull
wounded men out of line and rush them back to the MASH units. It had been
decided that the first crossing had to be made almost entirely by the men
themselves, because of the risk that demolished and burning vehicles might end up
blocking the bridge just as effectively as a Bremer wall.
On the 205 and I-5 bridges, each column was headed by a single huge
Caterpillar front-end loader with crudely shaped armor plating bolted around the
cab. The driver was able to see only through slits in the steel that covered his
windshield. Both machines had large heavy steel plates welded and clamped to
their blades to stop rifle and machine gun fire, RPGs, and 40mm grenades, and to
give the men at least some protection from direct fire on their front. On the railroad
bridge, a special armored and motorized boxcar had been built for the same
purpose. The right flank men on the southbound bridge and the left flank on the
northbound carried captured police mantlets and homemade shields slapped
together with miscellaneous pieces of Bakelite, Kevlar, or steel plating, anything
that might stop a bullet. The long lines of men walked stolidly forward, steeling
themselves for the artillery they were sure would come and possibly the explosion
and collapse if the special squads had missed any of the explosive charges the
Americans had planted on the bridges.
Back up in the control tower on Pearson Field, Wingfield put his field
glasses back into the case. “And they’re off to the races. Come on, Shane. We can’t
see shit from here, so let’s get to the command post.” They climbed down from the
tower, got back into the Humvee, and took off for a brief ride northward.
The NDF’s command post for the assault on Portland had been set up inside
the Marshall House, on Officer’s Row in the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
just north of Pearson Field. What had once been General Marshall’s main dining
room, where he had feasted blue-coated officers of the nineteenth-century United
States Army, was now in the hands of white men who hoped to defeat the
descendants of those officers. A mass of tables and electronic communications
gear filled the room, with the biggest map of Portland anyone could find hanging
on the wall. A huge blue, white and green Tricolor flag hung along another wall of
the dining room, and a number of large-screen televisions had been set up along
another wall, most showing split screens and taking feeds from a variety of
videocams out in the field, some mounted in stationary positions and others held
by cameramen advancing with the troops. Wingfield had a much better overall
view of the action from this room than he could get from the river shoreline itself.
A number of Nationalist soldiers wearing NDF tiger-stripes—mostly female, in
view of Wingfield’s ban on women in direct combat for the operation—were
manning the electronic gear and talking into microphones, wireless phones, and
typing on laptops.
“All three assault columns are now moving onto the bridges, General,” said
one of the women soldiers, former NVA Volunteer and now NDF Lieutenant
Jennifer Campbell, who was in charge of channeling communications between the
NDF columns. Jenny was 19 years old, a slim and feminine girl with dark brown
hair, a pixie face and lustrous brown eyes, who looked way too sweet and virginal
possibly to be a terrorist. It was a mistake that had cost a number of minorities,
policemen, FATPOs and an FBI agent their lives. “General Gair and General
DiBella are also beginning their advance inside the city, and Commandants Coyle
and Jackson report their men are out in the streets and are moving to secure their
objectives. They say it’s pretty heavy going. There are thousands of the enemy
jammed into a fairly small area of the city center, and they’re coming up against
mass fire from entrenched positions.”
Wingfield nodded. “Mmmm. Partman is smart enough to maintain a tight
interior lines sitch and not spread his men out too thin and leave too many gaps we
can work our way through, or bop our way through. I’ll want to talk to both field
commanders in the city in a minute, so stand by. First things first. How bad is the
enemy fire on the bridges?”
“It’s there, sir, but our artillery and mortars seem to be keeping most of their
heads down. It’s getting over the barricades that will be the problem,” replied
another staff officer, looking up from her monitor.
“None of the Union guns firing on the bridges yet?” asked Wingfield.
“Negative, sir. Not yet.”
A low thumping groan shook the floor and was audible even above all the
cannon and rocket fire. “What the hell was that?” demanded Wingfield.
“General McCann reports they’ve blown the railroad bridge, sir,” called out
Lieutenant Campbell.
“Damn! Looks like we didn’t get all the charges, then. Is McCann on
visual?” asked Wingfield.
“No, you said not, sir, too much chance of interception since the cell tower is
in Portland.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Sorry, I forgot. Get him for me on the radio.”
Campbell spoke into a field phone. “Badbreaker, this is Sunray. Come in.
Over.”
“Sunray, this is Badbreaker,” came Big Jim McCann’s voice. “I guess you
heard that all the way back there? Over.”
Wingfield took the handset. “Badbreaker, this is Sunray. Yeah, we heard.
Jim, can you read me? Over.” The noise of the artillery and rockets up and down
on the river shoreline was deafening even over the radio.
“Yes, sir, just barely,” shouted back McCann. “It’s kind of loud out here.
Over.”
“How’s it look? How many did we lose on the railroad bridge? Over.” asked
Wingfield.
“Not too many,” replied James McCann. “They blew the bridge right when
we started to move forward, and that shield car took a lot of the blast. Most of the
men got off okay. Some damned fool over there across the way was too impatient,
I guess, or maybe he thought the shield vehicle was full of explosives and we were
trying to ram ‘em. Couldn’t wait for us to get out onto the middle, when they
would have killed a lot more of us. We were lucky. Over.”
“Either that or our artillery freaked him out.” Wingfield responded.
“Peckerwood white trash criminals ain’t supposed to pack fieldpieces. No getting
across that way at all now? Over.”
“No, sir, it’s gone. A good forty feet in the middle is just splinters and
stumps now. Over.”
“Right, listen up. Here’s what we gone do. Get your guys on the move and
bring your whole division eastward. Follow the railroad tracks and try to stay
under cover and out of sight from the Oregon side as best you can, and then cut
over on Sixth Street. The reports I’m getting indicate that the shellfire isn’t too
bad. It looks like they’re overshooting like hell, plus if they have any rockets
they’re not cutting loose with them so far. Send your first brigade across the I-5
after my guys are all on the bridge, and send your second down to the 205 and
have them follow Corby Morgan’s people across over there. Those bridges are still
up and we’ve cleaned all the enemy demolition ordnance off them.” (“I hope,”
Wingfield muttered under his breath.) “You copy all that? Over.”
“Copy that, Sunray. Wilco. Badbreaker out.”
“Okay, comrades, we’re going to have a major troop movement of about
four thousand men crossing the enemy’s front, and we need to make sure they
don’t get hammered by the heavy stuff,” called out Wingfield. “Who’s hooked up
with artillery fire control?”
A woman soldier raised her hand. “I am, sir.”
“Tell our spotters keep an eagle eye on what’s left of the Expo Center and all
those shelled-out buildings from last night along Marine and Swift. The Americans
can still set up mortars in the rubble where they’ve got cover. At the first sign of
any hostile activity or anything directed at McCann’s division or the I-5 bridge, tell
the batteries to redirect and pound the hell out of it. We’ll give ‘em the Katyushas
early if we have to.” An American shell crashed into one of the other houses on
officer’s row, shaking the Marshall House and causing Wingfield to stagger a bit,
and then a second shell hit even closer, the shrapnel breaking some of the
windows. “Hellfire! Well, better they’re shelling us than our men on the bridges,
damned fools! That reminds me, though, how are we doing on taking out those
Union guns in the park and on the golf course?”
“Two of ‘em at least are gone, sir,” Lieutenant Campbell said. “We have a
Threesec spotter doing a Tarzan act up on top of the I-5. She climbed up there onto
a beam or something pretty high up, where she can see over what’s left of the
buildings along the river. She’s got a set of field glasses, one of our radios she got
from somewhere, and a wireless laptop. What she can’t see, she can get off Google
and CNN. She has a bird’s eye view of Edgewater golf course, the Arboretum and
Delta Park East. She’s calling in to C Battery, that’s the 155s on the corner of
Maritime and Columbia, and also to the Sector Two mortar crews’ fire control
officer. That’s about twenty-five pieces, eighty-one mils mostly. She’s dropping
some heavy shit on those niggers along MLK and all the way down to Bridgeton.”
“She?” shouted Wingfield in exasperation. “Judas priest, did none of you
ladies understand my order to stay out of direct contact with the enemy? I thought I
was supposed to be a general or something? Army Council says so, anyway. Didn’t
any of these mutinous gals get the memo?”
“This girl says she’s Third Section and she knows you, sir,” replied
Campbell. “Anyway, she didn’t ask me or anybody else here. She just went out
there on her own. First we heard of it was when she started calling in to C Battery a
few minutes ago.”
“Pipe it up so I can hear whatever the hell she’s doing,” ordered Wingfield.
Campbell turned a dial on a field radio set. Now he could hear the crackling voices
on the air.
“Nightshade, this is Barnacle Bill,” came a male voice. “How were those last
three on that one-ten on the golf course? Over.”
“Barnacle Bill is C Battery commander,” explained Lieutenant Campbell.
“He’s a former Navy guy.”
“I never would have guessed,” muttered Wingfield.
“Barnacle Bill, this is Nightshade,” came the voice of a girl who sounded
like she was about thirteen years old. Lieutenant Emily Pastras Brock was perched
on a girder on the center span of the I-5 bridge, about 300 feet over the highway,
leaning on a suspension cable so she didn’t fall while she used her binoculars. A
thin girl who still sported teenaged acne, she was wearing a warm shepherd’s coat
over her camos and a wool pea cap on her head. Her long brown hair hung stringily
from beneath the pea cap in the standard braid NVA women had learned was best
for action. Her hands were bare and freezing cold, since gloved fingers couldn’t
work the laptop or the radio adequately. “All three of your shells boxed him, but
you were all short or wide. Over.”
“How many clicks, Nightshade? Over.”
“Sorry, Bill, I don’t know what a click is. You were all about fifty yards
short, one way or the other. Tighten the whole group up inward by that much and
you’ll light him up, is all I can say. Does that make any sense?”
“Yeah, we’ll tweak it. Incoming in one minute. Don’t worry, Nightshade,
you’re doing fine. Over.”
“Nightshade?” muttered Wingfield. “Wait a minute, I remember now. Yeah,
I do know that girl. I think she’s about seventeen. Oh, this is beautiful.” He picked
up the mike. “Nightshade, this is Sunray. Refresh my memory. You’re that skinny
teenybopper from Threesec we pulled out of a mess in that Holy Roller church up
in Seattle back in July before the conference, right? Over.”
“Affirmative, sir,” came Nightshade’s voice. “I remember you. You’re the
SS guy who looks like Elvis. Over.”
“That’s General Elvis, and thank yuh very much. It was you and your
boyfriend, as I recall. Over.”
“Lieutenant Brock, yes, sir. Over.”
“Yeah, you guys were up at the conference in Longview. I know because I
saw you two on the front page of USA Today, having a slurp session out by the
candy machine at that hotel. Over,” recalled Wingfield.
“That was in the line of duty, sir. Over,” came the girl’s prim response.
“Yeah, I bet it was. What happened to him? Over,” asked Wingfield.
“I decided I had to make an honest man of him, so we got married, sir.
Over,” she replied.
“Is he out there with you? Over,” asked Wingfield.
“No, sir, he’s down below me somewhere. He’s with his company on the IFive. Over.”
“Well, you know you’re disobeying orders and you’re not supposed to be
swinging from the cables like a monkey or however you got up there, but now that
you’re there you can make yourself useful. How’s it look from where you sit?
Over.”
“I can see two self-propelled 203s and two 155s on the golf course that are
still firing, plus two more one-fifty-fives that took hits. They’re smashed to shit,”
the girl told him. “There’s two more two-oh-threes in Delta Park and there’s
another two guns in the Arboretum. Can’t tell what they are. They’re all dug into
bunkers with sandbags and Bremer walls all around them. The only way to take
them out is if our guys can drop a shell right on top of their heads. Over.”
“They’re still not firing on the bridge? Over,” asked Wingfield
incredulously.
“No, sir. Not yet. They’re gunning for you guys over the river, looks like.
Over.”
“Partman must have more charges planted on the I-Five we didn’t find,”
murmured Jenny Campbell grimly. Wingfield glanced down and saw her clenching
her fists until the knuckles were white. Her man’s probably on the bridge too, he
thought grimly.
“If they’re gunning for us, they’re not doing very well,” Wingfield told her.
“They’re shelling Vancouver, either because they’re lousy shots or because they’re
just incompetent. Any sign of anti-aircraft ordnance near those guns? Over.”
“Affirmative, sir, Some Humvees with mounted twin fifties and a couple
more with some kind of missile launcher. Over.”
“Okay, Nightshade, keep on doing what you’re doing. In a minute or so I’m
going to have Lieutenant Campbell here patch you into Luftwaffe Twelve as he
and his boys come in and join the show, and I want you to see if you can give him
a running commentary on what you see. You especially need to keep track of those
anti-aircraft vehicles. Over.”
“Roger, sir. Nightshade out.”
“Sunray out.”
***
At that moment Nightshade’s husband Lieutenant Cody Brock, aged 18, was
marching at the head of his men across the southbound span of twin I-5 bridge. He
was now in command of Company F, First Battalion, Fourth NDF Infantry
Brigade, which consisted of about 80 men, or to be more precise, about 30 men
and 50 or so boys Cody’s age or younger. His unit was one of the outfits that had
been issued with AK-74s. In addition to his weapon he carried a pack and a field
radio. One of the other officers, an Iraq veteran, had advised him to do so. “Always
carry your own radio. In case things get hot, you don’t want yourself going one
way and your communications another.”
The first outfit in the marching column in the southbound lanes, right behind
the front-end loader, were the 400-odd Germans of the Panzer Grenadier Brigade,
although their armor at the moment consisted purely of the Caterpillar that led the
way. Their three tanks and several Strykers would follow them across the bridge
later, once the obstacles were cleared away. The PGs were commanded by former
Bundeswehr officer Conrad Baumgarten, one of the first Germans to find his way
to the Northwest. For most of the guerrilla war he had been one of the NVA’s top
snipers, with a kill score second only to that of the legendary Cat-Eyes Lockhart
himself. He had specialized in Jewish targets; being deployed in New York City on
the NVA’s Operation Applesmash had been Baumgarten’s slice of pure heaven.
Once, on learning that a certain wealthy banker and financier of the Mosaic
persuasion was to show up for a cocktail party in a luxury hotel, Baumgarten snuck
in early to avoid the security sweeps before the affair, and then lay prone and
concealed in a heating duct for two days waiting for the moment to take his shot.
Almost every man in the unit had done prison time in Germany, sometimes
years of it, mostly for crimes of the mind: Holocaust denial, singing a forbidden
song from the old days, peacefully protesting against the transformation of
Germany into a province of Kurdistan, or simply for the crime of raising their
outstretched palm higher than their shoulder in public. They had all found their
way by hook or crook to the Northwest, seeking out a new Fatherland where they
could be Germans once again. “Mein boys vant to be first over ze river,”
Baumgarten had told Wingfield. “Ve owe zese American bastards a debt from
nineteen forty-five.” From somewhere or other (rumor had it stolen from the prop
stores of a major Hollywood movie studio) the NDF’s Quartermaster Corps had
somehow obtained a sufficient number of World War Two style coal-scuttle
helmets for the unit, only instead of black and white and red shield insignia on the
left side of the helmets the shield was in blue, white, and green. The PGs’ assigned
tanks and Strykers bore the old Third Reich Iron Cross symbol, but in green
outlined in blue trim.
To the left, the Fourth Infantry men could just crane their necks and see the
tops of the heads of a similar force to theirs, marching in the same direction
although in the normally northbound lanes and led by a similar armored bulldozer.
This was Colonel Mike Davis’s corps, attacking parallel with them on the other
bridge. They faced the same kind of entrenched enemy barricades they would have
to break through on the Oregon side.
Cody Brock’s company sergeant major was a summer soldier, another Iraq
and Iran veteran. He was a chunky, bearded, middle-aged construction worker with
a red boozer’s nose from Kelso, Washington, named Bernard Snow. Sergeant
Snow maintained the old military tradition wherein Top actually ran the outfit for
some kid officer, and so long as the kid didn’t meddle, Snowy graciously
pretended that he was actually in charge. It helped that Cody had been a Northwest
Volunteer and proven his mettle many times over during the guerrilla war, which
the older man knew and respected. Today Foxtrot and Golf companies were
mingled together in the column; Cody and the G Company commander marched at
the head of the line while the two respective CSMs herded up the rear watching for
stragglers and wounded.
Cody found himself walking beside the CO of G Company, a tall and
muscular young man in his twenties, with longish auburn hair and a light thin
moustache, packing an M16 slung over one shoulder. “I saw you at the briefing.
I’m Cody Brock.”
“Jason Stockdale,” came the reply.
“You NVA?” asked Brock.
“Oh, yeah. Montana. Missoula Brigade. Before that I did a year with the
Regulators, until that cock-up in Helena.”
“You knew Jack Smith?”
“I did. Good man. I was with the column that went into Helena that night. I
made it back. A lot didn’t.” While they spoke bullets from the Oregon shore were
whining overhead and ricocheting off the steel columns over their heads with a
clang.
“How green are your guys?” asked Cody.
“All my NCOs are Volunteers, but most of my company is just out of the
depot at Centralia,” replied Stockdale. “Got here two days ago. Got a few Middle
East vets, but some of them aren’t even old enough to drive.” The bullets from the
Oregon shore whipping and zinging over their heads began to increase in number,
and more bullets could be heard slapping into the sides of the mantlets carried by
the men along the right file of the column. Instinctively all the NDF men hunched
down and leaned forward, as if they were walking into a driving rainstorm.
Stockdale turned back and yelled at his men, “Keep walking and pay no
mind, boys! We’re just out for a stroll! Anybody gets hit, if they’re alive call for
medevac, if they’re dead take their ammo and rations and leave them by the side of
the bridge! Don’t worry, it will be our turn in a few minutes!” Somewhere ahead
there was an explosion, shouting and screams; some kind of grenade had been
lobbed or fired into the marching men. Yet the column moved forward. The NDF
had been frankly worried that untried men and teenaged boys with three weeks of
training, however strong in spirit, would break and run under fire. It wasn’t
happening.
“You married?” asked Cody, desperately trying to sound casual and pass the
time as if they weren’t being fired on. He looked down just in time to step over the
dead bloody body of a young German who lay face down on the asphalt. To his left
medevac trucks and SUVs scooted up and down the bridge, taking bullets, picking
up wounded men and running them back to the medical units in the rear. Hitting
and running during the guerrilla war had been one thing; marching headlong into
the enemy guns was turning out to be another.
“Gonna be married, if we both make it through,” said Stockdale. “Jenny and
I decided if one of us doesn’t, then the other one deserves a clean fresh start with
no baggage. She’s back there in the ops center working a laptop or something.
Soon as this bridge is safe and we’ve taken out the trash and moved those damned
Bremer walls down there out of the way, she’ll be driving a truck across. You?”
“Yeah, my lady and I had an NVA military wedding on the night of the
twenty-second up at Longview. We were in the delegation to the Treaty talks.
Seemed like a good way to round off a great day. Emily’s supposed to be back at
HQ now doing something on a computer as well, but if I know her she’s found
some way to get across the river ahead of us.”
“I agree with Wingfield’s call on that,” said Stockdale. “Using women as
guerrilla fighters during the revolt was a necessary evil. Sending them marching
headlong into the enemy guns to be slaughtered like this was goddamned Verdun is
something else. We have to start proving the Republic has better standards of
moral decency than we’ve been living with for the past century. Jenny wasn’t
happy about it, but she understands. She’s a soldier and she obeys orders.”
“You meet her in the Volunteers?” asked Brock.
“Oh, we knew each other from the sandbox back in Missoula. Well, she was
in the sandbox anyway, when I first saw her. I’m seven years older.”
“Mine was a Third Section spook at age sixteen,” said Cody.
“How the hell did you hook up with some Threesec Mata Hari?” asked
Stockdale.
“Out on a tickle with Bobby Bells’ crew up in Seattle,” explained Cody. “I
pistol-whipped her and she tried to stick a switch-blade in my eye. That was our
first date. Long story.” [See A Mighty Fortress.] Something snapped overhead and
exploded with a flash, the concussion making them stagger. “What the fuck was
that?”
“Forty-mil grenade, I imagine,” said Stockdale, shaking his head. “High.
They’ll get the range better as we get closer. Well, at least we haven’t had the
bridge blown out from under us yet.”
In the NDF command post in Marshall House, Wingfield heard the radio
chatter of the incoming aircraft. “Sunray, this is Luftwaffe Twelve. We’re over
Scappoose now, ETA three minutes, come back.” His voice was distinctly South in
the mouth.
“CB lingo. Must be a trucker as well as a pilot,” said Wingfield. “Luftwaffe
One-Two, this is Sunray. Our men are about halfway across the I-5. Luftwaffe
Niner, where you at? Over.”
“Sunray, this is Lufwaffe Nine. We’re over Troutdale, incoming from the
east, ETA also three minutes. Over.”
“Luftwaffe Niner, you take the 205. You know what to do. Over.”
“Roger, Sunray. Luftwaffe Nine out.”
“Luftwaffe One-Two, I’m going to patch you in to a young lady named
Nightshade who’s doing a human fly act on the top span of the I-Five. She’s
spotting for the boom-boom boys and she has her eye on some double-A waiting
for you guys. Meet her on Channel Six. Over.”
“Roger, Sunray. Switching to Six.” The pilot did so. “This is Luftwaffe
Twelve. Boss man tells me I’m supposed to hook up with a chick called
Nightshade on this channel, come back.”
“You got her, Twelve,” came Lieutenant Emily Brock’s voice.
“Where you at, honey? Come back.”
“I’m up on top of the I-Five bridge here checking out the spectacular view.
You’ve got some Clintonista anti-aircraft weapons moving up the 99 on-ramp onto
the interstate, couple of Humvees with twin fifties and one with some kind of
missile weapon. Looks like they know you’re coming. Better get them before they
get you. Over.”
“Gotcha, sweet thang.”
“Yewww, that’s gotta be a Texan,” said Nightshade.
“Broken Bow, Oklahoma, actually,” replied the pilot. “Little Dixie feller.
Name’s Roy. What’s yours, besides Nightshade?”
“Back off, Cletus. I’m a newlywed. Just make sure you don’t drop anything
nasty on the wrong side of those barricades,” demanded Emily. “My blushing
groom is down there somewhere.”
“Sounds like he’s a lucky guy, Nightshade. We’ll give him a hand and see if
we can’t get you two lovebirds back together.”
“This is Sunray,” interjected Wingfield. “I know NDF training isn’t up to
speed yet, but didn’t anyone teach you guys proper RTO procedure? Over.”
“Sir, this time last month I was hauling plastic crap up from Mexico in an
eighteen-wheeler for Houston Mighty Mart,” chuckled the pilot. “Don’t worry,
we’ll get ‘er done. Luftwaffe Twelve out.”
“Here come the flyboys,” said Cody down on the bridge.
Over the noise of the shells and the small arms fire they could hear the
rumble and thrum of engines. Looking to their right, the marching men could see a
flight of several dozen small propeller-driven aircraft shooting upriver toward them
at speed, some painted in camouflage with NDF roundels on their wings and
fuselages and some still in their civilian colors. There were Cessnas, Beechcraft
Bonanzas and Musketeers, Pipers, twin and single engines, anything the fledgling
Northwest air force could convert into a bomber or strafer for ground support.
They bore crudely clamped and spot-welded machine guns on their wings and all
carried some kind of Semtex or gelignite bomb under their belly, sometimes a
matched pair. These were homemade ordnance hastily turned out in improvised
munitions factories in the Nationalist-held areas to the north, made of anything
from steel and cast iron pipe to PVC to old aluminum beer kegs. Some of the
bombs were so heavy that the small aircraft lugging them wobbled in flight;
hopefully they would at least detonate on impact. The planes were flying low,
whipping over the burning and smoking rubble of the railway bridge and heading
straight toward the Oregon end of the I-5.
From her perch on the steel beam, Emily Brock got on her radio. “Luftwaffe
Twelve, this is Nightshade. You’ve got more problems, Roy. Here come the
gunships. Looks like Apaches. Three of the bastards. Over.”
“I see ‘em, Nightshade,” answered the Oklahoman. “Keep your head down
up there, honey. The shit is about to hit the fan.”
The USMC Apache helicopters swung slowly and lazily over the Oregon
end of the bridge and opened fire with their 30-mm chain guns; several of the NDF
planes simply melted into shards, and the pieces shot over the bridge and
plummeted into the river. The Nationalist aircraft kept on coming, and in the blink
of an eye a Cessna 177 detached itself from the flight and hurled itself headlong
into one of the Apaches with a crash and a deafening roar. Both aircraft exploded
like a second sun, and the whole inferno dropped like a stone onto the Union side
of the interstate; from the bridge, Cody and Stockdale saw a column of fire shoot
up into the sky and even over all the other noise they could hear the screams of
burning men.
The TV screens in the NDF command center showed it all clearly. “My God,
sir, that was a suicide pilot!” cried Jenny Campbell in horror.
“Negatory, Lieutenant, that was a drone,” Wingfield told her with
satisfaction. “There are thirty aircraft in Flight Twelve, but only twenty of them are
manned. Ten of those planes are remote-controlled drones being flown by the copilot in one of the other aircraft, kind of like a giant kid’s toy. We didn’t fancy
trying to take on gunships in a full on dogfight with nothing but civvie prop jobs,
so we gave ourselves an edge. A brainchild of Doctor Joseph Cord and a young
techie Volunteer type who uses the name Doctor Doom, I believe.”
The massed planes of Luftwaffe Twelve shot over the bridge and headed
eastward following Nightshade’s directions, straight for the Union gun
emplacements beneath the bridge. Some of their bombs released and dropped onto
the golf course and the Arboretum, crumping and echoing as they exploded.
Several more drone aircraft, including a Beechcraft Musketeer and an old Piper
Cub, were hurtled into the earth and exploded in columns of fire. “How are we
doing down there, sweet thang?” demanded Roy over the radio.
“It’s a mess, and it’s hard for me to see, but looks like you got two of them
at least,” she told him, peering through her field glasses. “One in the Arboretum lit
up like a Christmas tree, and one on the golf course looks like the barrel blew off.”
The two remaining Apaches whirled and gave chase as the Northwest flight
continued heading east, their chain guns and rocket launchers spitting and hissing.
“Bow to your partners, bow to your corners, now it’s time to do-see-doe!” yelled
the Oklahoma flight commander into his radio. The remaining airplanes split into
two smaller squadrons, shot up into the air on a sharp climb, and one after another
performed an Immelman roll, leveling out and racing westward back downriver.
They roared over the top of the I-5 and over the smoking wreck of the railway
bridge, and then about a mile downriver, they did the same thing, climbing and
rolling, reversing direction and leveling back eastward to make their second run.
“Hot damn, it worked!” yelled Roy into his radio with glee. “Those sheet metal
guys back in Chehalis who beefed up our struts and wings knew their shit! Doesn’t
look like we lost a single plane!”
The Apaches tried to follow, but their pilots were confused. They had never
fought against massed fixed-wing aircraft before. One squadron of NDF planes
attacked the helicopters with their wing-mounted machine guns, filling the sky
with a curtain of bullets. The Apaches’ armor held up well against the round
strikes, but even so, helicopters that are flying evasive maneuvers find it hard to
fire their own weapons. The other wing zeroed in on the American positions
behind the Bremer walls barring the bridge. A dozen bombs hurtled onto the
enemy behind the barricade, and two more drone planes were crashed right into the
moving anti-aircraft vehicles, the explosions hurtling fragments of men and
equipment into the air. The Apaches whirled about and opened fire again with their
thirties, and more Luftwaffe planes came apart or caught fire and spun out of
control, but a second drone smashed into a gunship and the two flaming wrecks
went spinning down into the river like a fireworks cartwheel. The last remaining
Apache’s pilot apparently decided he’d had enough of this sudden hornet’s nest.
He banked sharp left, turned on a dime, and ran.
Then up ahead at the end of the bridge, the armored bulldozer reached the
Union barricade and slammed into it, revving its engine and trying to push the
concrete Bremer wall aside. The driver did not succeed, but he did knock the berm
over onto its back, and he came to rest perched on top of it at roughly a 30-degree
angle. “Sunray, zis is Eisenkreuz!” shouted the Panzer Grenadiers’ Colonel
Baumgarten into his radio. “Ve haf contact mit ze enemy position!”
“Right, then, let’s play Delmar Partman a tune on Stalin’s Organ!” snapped
Wingfield back in the command center. “Tell the Katyusha batteries to open fire!”
Cody and Jason Stockdale could hear noise and shouting ahead, and the
sound of more grenades going off. Then dozens of flaming rockets from the
Washington side of the river screamed past them on both sides of the bridge and
overhead. From somewhere up the line came the command, “Down! Everybody
down!” The column of troops crouched down on their knees as rocket after rocket
slammed into the Oregon side, all along Swift Highway and Martin Luther King
Boulevard, a curtain of fire and smoke and debris, shaking the bridge under their
feet. “Holy shit!” yelled Jason Stockdale in awe. At the barricade, Conrad
Baumgarten stood up at the head of his men and roared “Stürmabteilung
vorwärts!”
The PGs had a company of Stormtroopers, in the old sense of the term. Even
before the National Socialist Kampfzeit, during the First World War, there had
been soldiers in special units of the German army, specially armed and trained,
who had been first over the top and first into the enemy trenches. It was from these
that Hitler had taken the name of his own SA. The Panzer Grenadiers had
developed such a unit of almost 100 men especially to go over the top in this one
crucial operation, and they now executed a maneuver they had been practicing for
a week. Several Grenadiers leaped up on top of the stranded Caterpillar armed with
RPGs and an M-60 machine gun, and began firing along the top of the Bremer
walls at the Americans crouched on some kind of parapet behind them, while
others hurled grenade after grenade over the walls. Six-man squads ran out forward
carrying long rectangles of plywood and rubber matting they had lugged with them
across the bridge, which they hooked together with steel brackets at each end, thus
producing three long ramps. These they humped forward and mounted against the
top of the Bremer walls. Then the rest of the Germans charged up the ramps and
leaped over the barricades, shouting and shooting.
“Up! Up!” the shout came relayed up the line. “The PGs are over! Forward!
Move out!” Cody Brock and Jason Stockdale stood up and signaled to their own
men, moving back in among them to count heads and make sure they were all still
together and on their feet. “Foxtrot!” shouted Cody, “Listen up! Our German
comrades are over the wall! Let’s go give ‘em a hand!” The men yelled and
cheered in excitement. He found his CSM. “Snowy, how are we doing?”
“We’re in pretty good shape, sir, all things considered,” said Snow. “That
kid Kenny Burgess took a round in the head. He’s gone.”
Cody turned around and shook his fist at the smoking carnage on the Oregon
side of the river. “You killed Kenny! You bastards!” he yelled. “Anybody else?
“Something fell on Robek, he’s gone too,” said Snow. “Landers and Potocki
got hit, but they fell out and should be on a medevac by now.”
“Okay, when we get over the barricade and we cut through whatever they’ve
got waiting for us, our battalion guides right and goes down the Pier Street offramp to the street, then east into Delta Park to take out any of those guns that are
still firing, and after that we go with Donner’s corps to move on the airport,” Cody
told him. “Bresler’s people are driving toward City Hall. If I go down you’ve got
Foxtrot. You take my radio and report to Captain Hatcher. His handle is Redeye
and we’re Tigger.”
“Got it,” said Snow.
“Let’s move out!”
“Papa Golfs are over, sir,” said Jenny Campbell back in the command
center. “Colonel Davis has breached the northbound barricade. Their bulldozer
pushed one of the Bremer walls over the side of the bridge and into the river, and
they’re getting into it hand-to-hand now. Davis says there’s no actual military
behind there, just those goddamned Loyal Leaguers and Oregon Watchmen.”
“No Marines or Rangers?” asked Wingfield in puzzlement. “Partman left an
important position like that to half-assed amateur auxiliaries?”
“From what it sounds like just from the chatter, sir, he’s using most of his
Marines along Sunset Boulevard,” said Jenny.
“Hmm, yeah, I guess that makes sense,” said Wingfield, ruminating. “Bobby
Bells and the whole Third Army are going right for his throat at City Hall, and I
guess he figured any old scumbags sitting behind those Bremers could just sweep
the bridges, and in a narrow field of fire like that they could hold us. Like
Thermopylae. Trouble is, those John Wayne wannabe yay-hoos ain’t no damned
Spartans.”
On the southbound I-5 the column lurched forward again at a slow but
steady walk. Cody caught up with Jason Stockdale again. “How’s Golf Company
doing?” he asked.
“Three men dead and six wounded. You guys?”
“Two dead and two wounded. Is it just me or is the ground fire slacking
off?”
“It’s slacking off,” replied Stockdale. “The planes and the rockets did a
number on those jarheads.” The NDF planes were still buzzing and whirling
overhead like a swarm of angry hornets, swooping in and strafing at unseen targets
on the Oregon end of the I-5 and along the shore below them.
“Damn!” swore Cody, looking up. “More choppers!”
“Yeah, but look, they’re ours!”
The bridge barricades and enemy positions along the shoreline were now
being attacked by the second Nationalist airwave, a mixed bag of helicopters
sporting blue, white and green roundels, with M-60 gunners firing from the doors
or from weapons mounted on the skids or the belly of the choppers. There were
two commandeered American Blackhawks, with door gunners blasting away, and
another two Seattle police helicopters, but most were civilian models, including
Portland’s own Channel 7 news and traffic copter with its original TV logo.
The First of the Fourth reached the concrete and sandbag barricade, and
Cody swore softly to himself as he saw at least a dozen dead German troopers in
tiger-stripes and coal-scuttle helmets lying on the ground or sprawled on top of the
Caterpillar and over the top of the Bremer walls. They mounted the ramps, and
when they reached the top, they saw that the Americans had built scaffolding
parapets along the south side to use as firing positions. Before them stretched the
elevated Interstate 5 going into Oregon, a hellish scene of burning vehicles and
wrecked aircraft, oily black smoke, and on the asphalt a carpet of dead bodies.
They clambered down from the parapets and kept on moving forward, stepping
over the burned and mangled remains, sometimes slipping in the blood. “Wait a
minute,” said Stockdale, staring down at the ragged enemy corpses. “These aren’t
jarheads!”
In front of them was a dead black man, his head covered with a blue
bandana and clenching a short pump shotgun. Stockdale kicked him over on his
stomach. The corpse was also wearing a black hoodie with the iron-on letters,
P.O.C. “Portland Oregon Crips!” exclaimed Cody. “These are goddamned nigger
gang-bangers!”
“Looks like the mighty United States of America is really scraping the
bottom of the barrel,” said Stockdale with a sneer.
As they continued to move forward off the bridge, the two young officers
looked over to their right, where they saw a platoon of 30 or 40 SS-tabbed men in
tiger stripes hooking ropes into their waist harnesses, preparing to rappel off the
guardrail of the interstate and down to the ground. A tall officer whose headgear
was missing was shouting and gesticulating at his men. He bore an odd
resemblance to former President Bill Clinton, although a much younger version.
He seemed to be shouting in a mixture of Italian and pidgin English. “Avanti,
ragazzi!” he yelled. “Lessa go, we no gotta alla day! Liberta!”
“Who the devil is that?” asked Cody curiously.
“Hell, who knows?” said Stockdale. “We got all kinds of white folks coming
here looking for a homeland. Speaking of which,” he added, nodding to their left.
There they saw Colonel Conrad Baumgarten of the Panzer Grenadiers, standing to
attention in the middle of the bullet-and-bomb-shredded highway, the handset in
one hand and a broom-handled Mauser pistol in the other. One side of his body
was soaked with blood; they couldn’t tell if it was his own or someone else’s.
Baumgarten was on the horn with the NDF command center in the Marshall
House. His voice rang through the control room. “Sunray, zis is Eisenkreuz. I haf
ze honor to report zat se First Army of ze Republic is now in Portland!”
Wild cheering and applause broke out in the command center, and then
again, when Lieutenant Jenny Campbell shouted out, “Sir! General Morgan reports
his corps has stormed the barricades on the 205! They’re moving off the bridge and
into the city!”
Wingfield spoke up when the noise finally died down. “Right, send this to
all units, and make sure you use frequencies and online channels that all the
goddamned news media can pick up on as well. Inform them that we have defeated
and overrun the enemy on the bridges, and that we are advancing on all fronts into
Portland. Remind them of my Operational Order Number Five issued at dawn
today. White Unionists, military or otherwise, are to be given one chance, and one
chance only, to throw down their weapons and surrender, if the tactical situation
makes it possible to do so without endangering NDF personnel. Anyone, man,
woman, or child with skin the color of shit is to be shot on sight. They had their
chance to leave over the past five years, and it’s time the Northwest Republic made
it clear that we goddamned well mean what we say. This land is now whites only.”
Deafening cheers rang through the command center. He turned to his adjutant.
“Come on, Shane. Let’s take ourselves a little constitutional over there in the City
of Roses.”
***
By midnight that night it was effectively over, although the mopping up
would take several more days. General Carter Wingfield and Captain Shane Ryan
stood on the street in front of the blackened and bullet-shattered four-story Italian
Renaissance façade of Portland’s City Hall. Around them stood most of the
generals who had taken the city: Robert Gair and Billy Basquine from the Second
Army, Robert “Bobby Bells” DiBella and Zack Hatfield from the Third Army, Big
Jim McCann and John Corbett Morgan from the First. They were staring down at
four dead U.S. Marines lying on the sidewalk in front of them.
“It happened about fifteen minutes ago,” said Zack Hatfield, who was
wearing his famed and photogenic broad-brimmed hat and his long gray duster
from his guerrilla days with the NVA out on the north Oregon coast, with his
Winchester rifle of Sunset Beach fame slung over his shoulder. “I just missed it.
Partman and these other guys, his staff officers I guess, must have known that
Amurrica’s number was up, and so they did the old Butch Cassidy and Sundance
Kid trick. They came charging out the door with their weapons blazing, and our
German comrades returned the favor.”
“Stupid damned jarhead,” muttered Wingfield, nudging the bullet-riddled
corpse with his boot toe. “Now the Americans have a legend of their own out of all
this mess. The only one they’ll be able to conjure up out of these last five sorry
years of torture and tyranny, I think, but they’re a sorry bunch and they shouldn’t
even have this one. They don’t deserve it.”
“How’s it looking for us casualty-wise, Carter?” asked DiBella.
Wingfield sighed. “Better than we had any right to expect, I suppose, but I
can tell you this, Bobby. We’ve lost more of our comrades in this one day than we
lost during the past five years of the NVA revolt.”
Someone had brought up a sound truck, and suddenly a blare of trumpets
split through the black and freezing Northwest night. Around them the surviving
German troopers leaped to their feet and began savagely to sing along.
“Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
SA marschiert mit ruhig, festem Schritt!
Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschier'n im Geist in unser'n Reihen mit!”
“These boys damned sure sing better than Partman did,” said Corby Morgan
with a grin.
***
Three days later Jason Stockdale and Jenny Campbell were finally able to
break away from their duties and take some personal time. Stockdale was newly
discharged from the NDF medical unit, which had taken over the Providence
Medical Center. Along with the remaining staff there and in other hospitals around
the city, the Republic’s military medical personnel were now treating thousands of
wounded NDF troops, white civilian casualties, and wounded white Union fighters
as well without differentiation. There were no non-white wounded; Wingfield’s
orders had been carried out and a dark skin was now a death warrant in Portland.
Stockdale’s G Company had been cleaning the last of the city’s Mexican gangbangers out of a warehouse, and he had taken a 9-millimeter bullet on his Kevlar
vest at close range, which had cracked a couple of ribs. He had to hold Jenny close
to him very gingerly.
They stood on the roof of the City Hall which up until recently had been
flying the last American flag in the Northwest. They were watching the sun rise in
the cold morning air. “It’s over. I can’t believe it, it’s over,” whispered Jenny,
crying softly. “All these years of fear and blood and death, and now it’s over. I
want to go back to Montana, Jace. I want to go home.”
“You got it, babe,” he said, kissing her hair. “We did it, Jen. We did it, now
it’s over, and we’re free. Now it’s time for us to begin.”
Part One: After The Fire
After the fire, the ruins there did lay.
After the fire would come a brand new day.
-Ian Stuart, After the Fire
I. A Madhouse of Ministries
(18 days after Longview)
“Work expands to fill the time allotted for its performance.” – C. Northcote Parkinson
On a dark and rainy morning in November, Ray Ridgeway mounted the
steps of the Insurance Building on the former Washington state capitol grounds in
Olympia. He passed beneath the classic portico supported by eight tall and stately
columns, stepped into the warm lobby of the building, and closed his sopping
umbrella as if it was just another workday, rather than the first official day of
business for the government of the Northwest American Republic.
Ridgeway was dressed in a conservative suit, tan winter coat and scarf.
Besides the umbrella, he carried an expensive briefcase like the bank president he
had once been. As of 16 hours ago, he was the new nation’s Finance Minister. At
this moment he had about 40 American dollars in his pocket; he was paying his
hotel bill with NAR vouchers, which the hotel manager probably honored only out
of fear. His multiple bank accounts were now frozen, by order of the banks’ head
offices back east, and his extensive portfolio of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds
were now technically illegal. The mortgage on his home back in Portland was way
in arrears, although under the circumstances he wasn’t worried about any attempt
at foreclosure. The Finance Minister was one of the poorest men in the new
country, and yet his heart was light as a feather—as light as it had been since the
day his youngest daughter had died at the hands of a nigger. Payback was going to
be a bitch, and Ray Ridgeway was going to be part and parcel of that.
It was not quite eight in the morning yet. As he entered the lobby, Ridgeway
could hear the sound of someone making a speech from the state legislative
building across the way. The Senate chamber’s individual desks had been removed
and hastily re-fitted with bleacher-like rows of seating for members of the
Constitutional Convention, which was now in session to adopt a new constitution
for the Northwest Republic based on a draft document that dated all the way back
to 2006. Ridgeway could hear Speaker Frank Barrow’s voice as he pounded his
gavel on the rostrum and tried to call the Convention to order; there seemed
already to be arguments breaking out on the floor. In fact, he could hear Barrow
amazingly clearly, considering that the convention chamber was indoors and
several hundred yards away. Then Ridgeway realized that what he was hearing was
the TV someone had set up in the lobby, where he could see Barrow in living color
on the rostrum via CNN. “Is CNN still in the country?” Ridgeway asked the young
soldier on the reception desk, who politely stood to attention. “I thought we’d
decided to throw them out?”
“I guess nobody’s gotten around to it yet, sir,” replied the soldier.
The scene on the television shifted to a view from a helicopter, which
showed a stretch of Interstate 5 on the California-Oregon state line, or border as it
was now. There were no border posts set up by either side yet, except for the old
Department of Agriculture shacks on the California side that used to check
motorists who might be transporting diseased produce. The weather was clear that
far south, and the sun was just rising over the mountains. The interstate was as
jammed with cars and trucks and SUVs as any Los Angeles freeway at rush hour.
“All those white people, fleeing from the only country in the world where they and
their children can be safe!” commented Ridgeway bitterly. “God, what wretched
cowardice and stupidity!”
“That’s the southbound lanes, sir,” said the soldier, pointing to the screen
“Look at the northbound lanes. They’re jammed up as well. As many white people
are coming into the Republic as are leaving. They’re not waiting for California to
be handed over to Aztlan. That’s what the beaners are howling for in Congress
now. Frente de la Raza says if us evil racists get our own country, then they should
get theirs. They’ll probably get it. I’d be surprised if there are any white people left
in California in a week’s time except for goddamned movie stars. As for all those
assholes who are leaving, fuck ‘em. We don’t need them. They were probably
Union collaborators and rats during the war anyway. By the way, how are we
supposed to address you now? Mister Minister, or Mister Secretary, or Mister
Ridgeway, or what?”
“I have no idea,” admitted Ridgeway. “Ray will do for now.”
He took the stairs up to his offices on the second floor. Finance had been
allocated one corridor in the maze of offices and conference rooms; they shared the
Insurance Building with the ministries of Commerce and Industry, Science and
Technology, and Public Health. On the previous day, the Council of State had
officially brought a dozen such bodies into existence. “That’s quite a gaggle of
ministries we got here, Red,” John Corbett Morgan had commented after the new
ministers and their deputies had been sworn in. “Is that right? Do cabinet ministries
come in gaggles?”
“Right at the moment, John, I’d call them a madhouse of ministries,”
Council of State chairman Henry “Red” Morehouse had responded with a smile.
“We’ve got only one man here, Foreign Minister Stanhope, who has done anything
even remotely resembling this kind of job before, although Comrade Ridgeway has
experience in the private sector that comes close to his Finance portfolio. This is
going to be the mother of all learning curves, for all of us.”
Walter Stanhope was a former American Secretary of State. He had actually
been an American signatory to the Treaty negotiations held in the Lewis and Clark
Hotel in Longview, after which he promptly embarrassed the hell out of the United
States by defecting to the Northwest Republic. He had given away the bride Emily
Pastras at her impromptu wedding to Cody Brock in one of the hotel restaurants
that night, and then left Longview in the same helicopter as the NVA delegation.
Stanhope raised his hand. “I’ll be happy to offer any advice and assistance I can to
any of you gentlemen,” he said. “Foreign Affairs is going to be mostly a sinecure
for a while, since no other country on earth recognizes us, including the one we
just signed the Treaty with, so I doubt I’ll be too busy with my own portfolio.”
“As soon as possible you will each be allocated separate digs around town
for your offices,” Morehouse went on. “God knows the state of Washington had
enough bureaucrats who have now fled the country, or else they’re hiding out, so if
we want to, we can give every government janitor his own corner office. Ironic,
when you think about all those years when the Party could never afford a single
stand-alone building and had to operate out of fleabag apartments and mobile
homes. But the security situation is still a bit fluid, and we want to keep everybody
together here on the capitol grounds for a while until things settle down.”
Ridgeway was aware of that; the previous night in his hotel room, he had heard the
sputter of rifle and automatic weapons fire, and the boom of the occasional
grenade. Not all of Olympia’s former American masters were reconciled to the
treaty, and the NDF was still flushing out and putting down the last of the darkskinned minorities as well, the final holdouts who for some reason defying rational
analysis still hadn’t gotten the message yet. The Jews had fled the city months ago.
When Ray Ridgeway reached the second floor, he saw that a large brown
cardboard sign, evidently cut from a box, had been taped to one wall at the
beginning of the appropriate corridor. It displayed an acrylic blue, white and green
Northwest Tricolor flag torn from a pre-revolutionary Party sticker, beneath which
was inked in black Sharpie, Ministry of Finance and the Treasury. Ridgeway had
commandeered a suite of offices that had once belonged to the state insurance
commissioner. He walked in and found the outer office crowded with people.
“Everybody here early?” he said after his new staff wished him good morning.
“That’s an encouraging sign.”
“Actually, most of us are sleeping on cots over in the Rotunda or in the
governor’s mansion,” said former Northwest Volunteer Martin Dewitt, a middleaged man who had drawn the job of Deputy Finance Minister because he had been
a CPA under the old régime. “They were talking about moving the whole show to
Fort Lewis and bunking the government down in the barracks there, but the NDF is
still securing the base, and there’s still booby-traps ZOG left behind. The
Divisional Quartermaster wants to start confiscating some buildings to
accommodate government personnel, but he hasn’t been given a list yet of what’s
up for grabs. That’s if we decide to make Olympia the capitol, which is another
thing they’re arguing about across the way there.” Dewitt jerked his head in the
direction of the legislative building. “There are factions demanding that we choose
Spokane or Coeur d’Alene or Boise. We’re still getting the old anybody-who-liveswest-of-the-Cascades-is-a-sissy thing, if you can believe that. I don’t think white
people are ever really happy unless they have something really dumb to fight each
other about.”
“Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,” said Ridgeway with a sigh. “The
religious knives haven’t really come out so far. Anyway, Red and Frank tell me
that Olympia is it for the foreseeable future, in the sense that the State President,
when we have one, will reside here over there in the old Governor’s Mansion. The
Republic will want to decentralize as much as possible, though, so when they send
the bombers they can’t wipe us all out in one fell swoop. Same goes for industry
and all other vital services. Everything needs to be spread out as much as possible.
No idea where we’ll end up, but that’s one of many bridges we’ll have to cross
when we come to it. As far as accommodation goes, I’d like all our Ministry staff
who don’t have their own homes in the city to go to at night to come with me over
to the Red Lion. They’ve got plenty of room over there, and enough employees
stuck around so the restaurant is still open. That way we can keep on brainstorming
and working after office hours, which is the way we’re going to be rolling for a
long time. We have a whole new nation to build and somehow we’re going to have
to pay for it all. That’s our department. I’ll arrange with the NDF to have military
transport of some kind for us to get in to work in the mornings, and back to the Red
Lion at night. Hopefully a proper bus and not a truck, although these days we
pretty much have to take what we can get.”
“Is the bar gonna be open late?” called one of the men. “We’re all waiting
for the witching hour tonight.”
“Yes, that’s right, isn’t it?” replied Ridgeway wryly. “General Order
Number Ten for NVA personnel, or I guess ex-NVA personnel as we are now, is
officially rescinded at midnight tonight, and we can break the long dry spell. Those
of you who haven’t already been doing so for the past few weeks, that is. Me, I
will probably be asleep. I expect every one of you to be in here tomorrow morning
at eight sharp, sitting behind whatever desks you have managed to glom onto, and
ready to go to work. If you’re hung over and puking in the wastebaskets, that’s
your look-out. Just make sure you’re working while you puke. Now could we
move into the conference room?”
The former insurance commissioners of the state of Washington had been
sufficiently senior bureaucrats to rate a good deal of luxury. The floors of the
offices were plushly carpeted and the conference room held a long mahogany
table. “Sorry about the crowding,” said Ridgeway. “Looks like we’re short on
chairs. In keeping with our new policy in the Republic of returning to the old
gentlemanly ways, I would like to ask all of our ladies to sit down while the men
stand, including myself.”
After they all were seated or leaning against the walls, Ridgeway took a look
at them down the table. The new government department consisted of 32 people
plus himself, about evenly split between male and female. This contrasted sharply
with their opponents, the hundreds of thousands of federal employees who worked
for the United States Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the
Currency, the New York Stock Exchange, the U.S. Mint, the Office of Budget and
Management, and all of the other innumerable bureaucratic organs who dealt with
the finances and economy of the United States.
Ridgeway smiled, and spoke. “Good morning, comrades, and welcome to
the first day of the rest of your lives. For those of you who don’t know me, I am
Raymond Ridgeway, former president of Cascade Bank, Oregon National Bank,
the Portland Municipal Credit Union and a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn’t
make any difference now. I was a Volunteer for the last couple of years of what I
suppose may now be referred to as the War of Independence, reporting directly to
the Army Council, and part of my job was designing a plan of operation for this
very day, so that the Republic would hit the ground running and we wouldn’t end
up floundering around in a sea of red ink and economic confusion that would stifle
us before we even had a chance. Every one of you are here because, like me, you
have some experience in the old private financial sector. All of you have spent
most of your working lives handling and moving other people’s money. Now you
are going to have a chance to do the same for an entire nation. First question: how
many of you here are not NVA, or were not in some other way associated with the
Northwest independence movement?”
Half a dozen men and women hesitantly raised their hands. “I would like to
extend an especially grateful welcome to you new comrades and co-workers,”
Ridgeway told them. “I will not ask you about your motivations for staying when
so many people in the Northwest are running away, but I will tell you that you
have made the right choice, for yourselves and for your descendents. The
Northwest Republic is going to depend on the effort and the services of those
normal everyday white men and women who have made the difficult and soulsearching decision to remain at their posts, and to continue with their lives here in
a new order of society.”
Ridgeway paused, and then continued. “Now let me describe for you in
general terms the strategic task that lies before us in the long run. For the first few
months, hell, the first few years, we are going to be working closely in harness
with the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Commerce and
Industry to make sure that just as the United States could not defeat us with
weapons and murder and prison, they will not be able to defeat us with their
almighty dollar.
“Our three ministries will be kind of like a Trouble Trio in the old NVA. We
will build our assets and resources, and we will take on and defeat every economic
and monetary obstacle and challenge, every attempt the United States and the rest
of the world makes to try and strangle our new nation in the cradle through dearth
and economic hardship. The old régime is already threatening to impose crushing
economic sanctions on the NAR. As Senator Gerald Gershon put it on Fox News
yesterday, they intend to send us back to the age of the horse and buggy, and then
starve the horse to death. They will not succeed. Our long-term strategic goal must
be to create a completely self-contained economy here in the Northwest,
completely independent of the rest of the world, almost like we were on another
planet. Anything we have to import from outside, anything that we cannot produce
or grow or manufacture ourselves, will be a knife held at our throat by ZOG until
we find some way to remove it. All this globalization crap that has caused so much
misery in the world for so long is going to end, here. The Northwest Republic must
grow everything we eat, and make everything we use. That is a very tall order, but
we are going to fill it, and we will do so with such skill and brilliance and panache
that we will take the world’s breath away. We are going to demonstrate for good
and all, that white people are indeed better people.”
***
Late that afternoon the new Cabinet met in the old governor’s conference
room in the capitol building. Eight out of the 12 ministers were present. All of
them were wearing NDF uniforms, except for Ray Ridgeway, Walter Stanhope,
and Fiona Bonnar, a registered nurse who had been made Minister of Public
Health. As befitted a revolutionary régime, the new government was still largely
military. Three of the absentees were with the army in various places around the
Northwest, and the fourth, General Frank Barrow, who now held the State Security
portfolio, was out in the old Senate chamber attempting to ride herd on the
squabbling delegates and factions of the Constitutional Convention.
The Convention had rendered the old capitol building perpetually chaotic,
day in and day out, with a constant ebb and flow of people and news media
wandering through the Rotunda, in and out of the Convention Hall and the
committee and meeting rooms. There were dozens of individual committees of the
Convention gathered in various offices, conference rooms, and cubbyholes all
around the building, discussing and drawing up reports on everything from the
adoption of the metric system (maybe) to soybean production to legally defining
homosexuality as a mental illness. The marble-floored Rotunda was littered with
cots where delegates and NDF soldiers were sleeping at night, as well as all kinds
of detritus from empty Styrofoam coffee cups and pizza boxes to rifles and
ammunition leaning in the corners.
Above all, in every corner there were overflowing receptacles ranging from
metal wastebaskets to a Waterford crystal punchbowl from the old governor’s
banquet service that had been commandeered as public ashtrays. One of the first
acts of the Convention had been to repeal all anti-smoking laws in the Northwest
that under the United States had demonized tobacco users and turned them into a
viciously persecuted minority. “Smoking is a filthy and unhealthy habit, no doubt
about that,” Barrow had proclaimed from the rostrum. “You gotta be a real idiot to
do it, no argument, comrades. But under ZOG it has also become a statement of
political resistance against the liberal régime. Who knows how many men and
women would never have joined the NVA if the old order had not added insult to
injury, flexing their petty power over the lives of others by perpetually driving
them out into the cold and the rain simply to light up? For how many of us did that
not become the final straw in our own minds? Fuck second-hand smoke!” This
brief speech had received the longest standing ovation yet from the assembled
delegates, and the Convention was proceeding in a haze of tobacco fumes. The
traditional smoke-filled back rooms of political deal making in the new Republic
were truly smoke-filled.
There were 14 chairs arranged around the long polished mahogany table in
the conference room. In the former governor’s chair sat Council of State chairman
Henry Morehouse, a spare and mild-looking middle-aged man whom one media
personality who interviewed him once described as “an evil Mr. Rogers.” The
meeting was about to begin without him when Barrow came in, a tall man in his
forties with ash-blond hair and a weathered face. “Hey, Frank, glad you could
make it,” called Morehouse. “How’s it going out there?”
“It’s a three-ringed circus, and I feel like a lion tamer whose cats have
escaped and are running around in the audience,” said Barrow, taking his seat.
“Look, Red, I can’t ride herd on that dog and pony show out there and handle State
Security at the same time. You need to relieve me of one or the other, or at least
give me some help. I went into it with nothing but a small copy of Roberts’ Rules
of Order I found in the old lieutenant governor’s desk drawer.”
“I gave you State Security because of your police and NVA background, and
the chairmanship of the Convention because of your brilliant handling of the
Longview conference,” said Morehouse.
“Brilliant, my ass! All I did was just shove a single sheet of paper under
their noses every day for ten weeks and demand they sign it,” said Barrow with a
scowl.
“Which they eventually signed,” pointed out Morehouse.
“Beyond that, my so-called brilliant handling consisted of saying no all the
time to everything those assholes threw at us to try and divert us from a sovereign
nation. No offense, Walter.”
“None taken,” said Stanhope. “They were assholes. You should have seen
and heard them behind closed doors. They finished any doubts I ever had about
coming over in public. I swear to God, if I had to listen to Howard Weintraub try to
talk us into arresting or killing the NVA delegation by surprise one more time, or
hear that ghastly Galinsky woman weep about how we were betraying the Six
Million of the Holocaust by even speaking to you, I would have flipped out and
started clubbing them with a chair.”
“Red, no kidding, can I at least get somebody to alternate with me on this
Speaker of the Convention gig?” pleaded Barrow. “There’s Security stuff I have to
get onto. I’ve got a secret police to create. Weintraub is hollering all over the
media back in the States that we’re a fascist tyranny. How can we be a fascist
tyranny with no secret police, while I sit here fooling around with all this
democracy and Constitution crap? What kind of wicked evil right-wing fascist
racist Nazi tyrants are we?” There were general chuckles all around the table.
“I would be honored to take the rostrum for tomorrow’s session, Frank, and
any other time you need me to spell you,” offered Stanhope. “The Russians are still
being coy about recognizing the Republic officially, although they want to go in
with us on some kind of worldwide paper and pulp monopoly. Other than them,
nobody else is even speaking to us. I’m very much at a loose end.”
“Hallelujah! Praise his name!” shouted Barrow.
“Let me guess, you just came from the Holy Rollers’ caucus,” said Bart
DeMarco, the Minister of Transport.
“What’s the latest from the floor?” asked Morehouse.
“We’ve adjourned for the day, although there will be committee meetings
and bullshit sessions and little intriguing conspiracies going on off in little corners
until the wee hours, like there are every night,” he told them.
“What’s the scoreboard looking like, Frank?” asked General John Corbett
Morgan, a large black-bearded Kentucky mountain man who had commanded a
Flying Column in the Olympic Peninsula during the revolt, before leading the First
Army’s assault over the I-205 bridge into Portland. He was now Minister of
Defense. “Have the tub-thumpers from Fifth Monarchy and the Sanctified Church
of Hootin’ Holler got us all wearing Pilgrim hats yet?”
“Actually, so far the extreme Christians aren’t the problem, at least not as
much as we were afraid they’d be,” replied Barrow. “It’s the shithouse libertarians,
the bearded dudes from the little cabins in the backwoods who don’t want any laws
or government at all. Which would be great, if it were possible. Hell, I think in a
lot of ways it would be just the ticket to say never mind the 1950s, let’s go all the
way back to the 1850s. Trouble is, that isn’t really on the table so long as we’ve
still got ZOG sitting over there in D.C. and Jew York sharpening their daggers for
us. You can’t fight off a nuclear threat with hand-loads from a log cabin out in the
Sawtooth Range.”
“They’ll be happy once they understand the Federal Reserve and the
Trilateral Commission are no longer in the saddle,” said DeMarco. “Until we ask
them to pay taxes, of course.”
“Otherwise, despite a lot of squabbling over details and the hundred and one
personal hobby horses everybody’s riding, which mostly involve banning
something somebody else wants to do, the delegates are following the 2006 draft
pretty closely so far,” Barrow went on approvingly. “I was amazed that they were
able to wrap their minds so easily around the concept of an institutionalized
parliamentary Opposition, the whole point of which is to pick holes in everything
the government does. Our version of the two-party system. One speaker out there
called the Opposition the people’s defense attorneys, and although we won’t have
actual attorneys in the Republic, I think that pretty much nails it.”
“Any major surprises so far?” asked Morehouse.
“Nothing we hadn’t always anticipated,” Barrow told them. “Some guy from
Idaho put in a motion that we change the name of the legislature from the National
Convention, like it is in the draft, to Parliament, and that seems to have some
support among the various cliques. More dignified and all. Parliament is fine with
me, if that’s what they want, but personally I think it’s just some mule-headed
paleocons and ego monkeys who want to change anything the Old Man wrote just
on general principles.”
“The Old Man didn’t write the draft Constitution,” protested Fiona Bonnar
from Public Health. “Not all of it, anyway. It was a group effort, including a lot of
input from the imprisoned Order men and David Lane himself! That’s bordering
on blasphemy!”
“Just what we need! Another religious problem!” chortled Gary Bresler from
Commerce and Industry.
“I don’t believe the Old Man or the Order guys or anyone involved in the
2006 draft intended it as holy scripture, comrade,” Morehouse admonished her
gently. “They always made it clear, it was only a draft. It contains suggestions
based on lifetimes of observation of how the old system went wrong. But the final
version was always something to be determined by that very mob out there now,
whom so many have suffered and died to bring together into that room, so they
could decide what they wanted to keep and how they want to live.”
Barrow nodded. “There are a few who still want to go back to the old
conservative ways sans niggers, complete with Fourth of July picnics and the
Brady Bunch, but they won’t carry the day,” he told the Cabinet. “Time moves
forward and not backward. We can’t turn back the clock to 1950, or 1861, or 1776,
and the majority of them understand that.”
“So how go the religious wars?” asked Morehouse wearily. “I remember
that little speech you gave us before you guys headed out for Longview, Frank, to
the effect of yes, I know, but not now. [See A Mighty Fortress.] Trouble is, this is
it. The time has come. We’re not going to be able to put it off any more.”
“I notice the government has found something for Bob Gair and Reverend
McCausland to do elsewhere,” remarked Morgan. “I thought they were going to
pull down on each other on that last day at Longview, over what music to play
when the Tricolor flag went up.”
“Don’t I remember?” said Barrow with a wan smile. “Good thing Cathy
Frost stepped in and gave us our National Anthem, then. No major uproar yet,
largely because nobody has asked for anything that anybody else absolutely refuses
to concede. Some Asatru and Wiccan types want the right to designate certain
groves and places on ley lines as sacred or spiritual sites, and that went over
without too much hurly-burly, although most people don’t know what ley lines are
and no specific locations have been mentioned. When we’ll have trouble is when
the Odinists want to designate a sacred grove on the same street as the local
Pentecostal church. You already know that we got the Christians to quit yelping
about the swastika on the NDF eagle by giving them A Mighty Fortress as the
national anthem. That’s fine by everybody, because it’s a hell of a song. I think if
we’d played Great Big Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts at that moment, those
of us who were there would make it our national anthem.
“Right now the various religious types are hollering about teaching
evolution and paleontology in the schools,” he continued. “If they really keep on
pushing it, we may end up with a school system segregated on religious lines,
which as far as I’m concerned is a non-starter, but we’ll see what kind of report the
Education Committee comes up with. I personally think we could make do by
giving parents a choice of tracks within the system. Fundamentalist parents who
don’t want their kids learning evolution or other scientific stuff that contradicts the
Bible go to Biology A and study butterflies and dissect frogs, which I think is
scripturally safe, and those who want their kids to learn actual science go to
Biology B and get the whole nine yards.”
“We can live with that,” said Morehouse. “The problem is they don’t just
want their kids not being taught Darwin. The hidden agenda is that they want to
make sure nobody else’s kids get taught Darwin, either. They want some kind of
endorsement from the state saying that their religion is really the right one, and
we’re just kindly tolerating all those eccentrics who believe otherwise, and that
they can’t have. That has always been the problem with Christians. They’re mostly
good people as individuals, but they cannot and must not ever be trusted with state
power in this country, because they always end up trying to impose their own
religious beliefs and practices on others.”
Barrow went on, “They also want Christmas but no Halloween in the
schools, and they want religion classes, which in theory I don’t object to, but the
trouble will come when pagans and Wiccans and the agnostics and the just plain
anti-Christian fanatics demand equal time.”
“Have classes in all Aryan religions and religious history and let the parents
choose which ones they want their children to go to,” suggested Bresler. “Simple
and fair.”
“The trouble is, simple and fair has never had much to do with religion, and
we have two thousand years of history to prove it,” said Morehouse wearily. “I
suppose the antis are screaming at the top of their lungs against the teaching of
Christianity of any kind?”
“Like banshees,” confirmed Barrow.
“Jesus is a dead Jew on a stick, and all that crap?”
“But of course.” Barrow shrugged. “We’ve always had that problem. A
minority of the people in the Movement have been in it, not to free our people or to
implement the 14 Words, but because of a sheer hatred of Christianity that
approaches the level of insanity. I think it’s because when they were little, their
parents wouldn’t let them watch TV or play video games on Sunday mornings, but
made them dress up in scratchy clothes and hard shoes, and go to church where
they were bored out of their minds, and scolded by old ladies for farting in Bible
class. Hell, I don’t know what goes on in the minds of some of these people who
never seem to get that race is what is important. I mean, Jesus Christ on a raft!
Pardon the term, but it’s not as if we all won’t find out for ourselves one day
what’s on the other side of life.”
“How bad is it likely to get?” asked Joe Jennings, Minister of Science and
Technology. “We’re going to need scientists in the Republic who studied
something besides the book of Genesis.”
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t completely sidetrack the whole Convention, if I
have to call in some of the boys and go upside some people’s heads in a back
room,” said Barrow. “But this is an ulcer in our body politic, and it’s going to be
with us for a long time. We’re going to have to find a modus vivendi to deal with it.
Speaking of religion, Red, I had a brief talk this morning with a priest named
Father McEwan or McIan or something. He’s a Tridentine Catholic. You know, the
old pre-Vatican II Catholics who still hold the mass in Latin? He made an
interesting suggestion. Suppose we recognize the Tridentines as the official
Northwest branch of Catholicism, and hand over the churches and cathedrals to
them? He figures that will put us on the good side of millions of the more
traditional Catholics, almost all of whom are white, and also give us an excuse to
boot out these damned left-wing priests and nuns who have been causing so much
trouble over the past century everywhere they go, liberation theology and all that
crap. Plus, it looks like the next pope in Rome is going to be a nigger, some
archbishop from Nigeria. If we can set up a traditional white Pope here in the
Northwest, that will be a big draw for contacts and resources.”
“An intriguing possibility,” admitted Morehouse. “Does this Father
McWhosis understand that the old religious exemptions are out the window, and
they will have to pay any property taxes we decide on non-homestead property for
their churches? Also, does he understand that under the Northwest Constitution
professional clergy of any kind will be prohibited, and they’re all going to have to
get day jobs?”
“He does, and he had a suggestion on that,” Barrow replied. “These
Tridentine priests are some of the most educated white men left in the world, as far
as the old classical learning goes. Why not let them teach history and Latin and
whatnot in the schools?”
“Bloody hell, then not to mention the anti-Christians turning flips, you’ll be
having all the Prods frothing at the mouth about letting in the Whore of Babylon,”
spoke up Patrick Brennan, the Minister of Race and Resettlement. “I was hoping to
leave all that shite behind in Belfast.”
“We will,” promised Morehouse. “Maybe we can let these Tridentine priests
pick up a paycheck by teaching at university level and not in the public schools.
Frank, when you see this priest again, ask him to submit some kind of official
memorandum or position paper in writing from whatever his organization is. It’s
got political and cultural potential, if we can find some way to work it without
getting all the Holy Rollers bellyaching. Plus, we owe that poor bastard Mel
Gibson a favor, I think. This will come under Culture and Education, but Stepanov
is still up in Seattle and Macready is out east shooting up Spokane, last I heard.
We’ll lay it on them when they get back. Please continue, Frank.”
Barrow gulped down coffee from a paper Starbucks cup someone had
handed him. “The main debates now are centering around just how much authority
the central government is going to have, and how that authority will be organized.
There are still those who are concerned that us big bad Nazis are going to set up
some kind of tyranny where the Bureau of State Security tells everybody what
color socks they can put on in the morning.”
“That’s not even close to what Hitler did in Germany!” protested James
Salvatore, the new Minister of the Interior.
“You know that and I know that, Jim, but an amazing number of people
even from the NVA itself have no idea what the real story on Hitler and National
Socialism is,” said Barrow. “You can’t erase generations of lies and disinformation
from people’s minds overnight. But it’s actually got more serious overtones than
that. A lot of people don’t like the idea of a national police force. They want to
elect a sheriff who then appoints his own deputies like during the frontier days.”
“Which opens the door for all kinds of local cliques and corruption, just like
in the frontier days,” said Arthur Flowers, the Minister of Justice. “We can’t have a
situation arise where local law enforcement are basically just the head-knockers for
the community’s wealthy élite. The police have to serve all of the people, and not
just the local city council or county commissioners or the local real estate
developer or whoever’s signing their paycheck. They also have to serve the
interests of the state and society as a whole, not just purely parochial concerns in
their own little town or bailiwick.”
“We will also need a national paramilitary police force as a coordinated line
of defense in case of an American invasion.” said Morehouse. “Don’t worry about
it, Frank. People accepted state police under the old régime and they’ll get used to
the Civil Guard. Besides, we’re going to have an armed society, remember? That’s
the greatest counterbalance to any attempt to impose a tyranny on any level.”
“Assuming the people have the guts to turn their guns on authority figures,”
said John Morgan sourly. “We had the Second Amendment in the U.S., and yet for
generations all those guns just sat in the closets of so-called patriots gathering
dust.”
“But there has to be a civilian authority and an independent judiciary,”
argued Barrow. “People still cling to this idea that election is somehow better than
appointment, despite the entire experience of this continent since Andrew
Jackson’s time, which proves that electing government officials is about the worst
way to go, since it leads to a class of professional politicians who are just as bad as
any British royal governor ever thought of being.”
“That’s what happens when you give the vote to every retard and syphilitic
nigger drug addict, yes,” argued Bresler. “But the purpose of qualified and earned
citizenship and franchise within the Northwest Constitution is to make sure that
you have as responsible and educated an electorate as possible, so you don’t have
fools voting other fools and thieves and snake oil salesmen into office.”
Morgan spoke up. “Folks will accept a more or less imposed national police
force so long as it’s genuinely their police force, there to protect and serve, as the
old saying used to go, but they want that feel-good factor of going into the little
booth and pulling the lever about something, too. It don’t mean nothing, hell, it
ain’t meant nothing in the past hunnert years if the only people on that ballot was
thieves and liars and con men and it cost ten million dollars to run a campaign, but
folks want it. They’re used to it. It’s like a kid with his security blanket. They gone
get twitchy over appointed judges and sheriffs. Or will there be any sheriffs?”
“What about this?” suggested Morehouse. “The basic unit of administration
in the Republic will still be the county, right?”
“Yes,” agreed Barrow. “We decided to keep those because they’re what
people are used to, and there’s existing infrastructure we can step in and take over.
We’ll probably have to combine some of the counties out east, because they’re so
thinly populated.”
Morehouse nodded. “Mmm hmm. Suppose we have one elected sheriff for
each county, who will be the Republic’s chief representative and administrative
officer, as he actually was in medieval England when the office was first created
all those centuries ago? The sheriff will handle things like revenue collection and
administration of state property, so forth and so on. He will be the top civilian
officer in each county, and we have to trust those who have earned the vote
through fulfilling their responsibilities to elect good ones. In a non-capitalist
system that will almost certainly be subject to severe economic sanctions, there
won’t be all that much bribery and corruption money floating around, anyway. It’s
not like there will be an Indian casino every twenty miles, like there was under the
old order.”
“Kinda hard to do with no Indians,” agreed Flowers. “What about the
judiciary? That will come under my department.”
“Same deal applies, Art,” said Morehouse. “Let the citizens’ roll elect a
senior judge and assistant judges in a population-apportioned number for each
county.”
“Will these judges be paid by the state?” put in Gary Bresler.
“Doesn’t that violate the Constitutional prohibition against a legal profession,
anybody making a living off the law?”
“The Constitution prohibits attorneys,” said Barrow thoughtfully, rubbing
his chin. “Or rather it prohibits anyone accepting payment in money or anything of
value for serving as an advocate in a legal case. People charged with crimes can
still appoint someone else to defend and speak for them, those advocates just can’t
be paid. It will be considered to be a civic duty, like it was in ancient Rome, where
some of the most famous statesmen and philosophers started off as advocates in the
law courts. We all know what that provision was meant to prevent. Under the old
order, lawyers were an unmitigated horror. The entire court system was essentially
nothing more than a gigantic fraud to allow millions of parasites in expensive suits
and briefcases to live large off the fruits of human misery. It was a machine that
pulled people into it as the raw material to be processed and mangled and crushed
like grapes in a wine press, drained of every last penny. We cannot and will not
allow that here, not ever. But we do need some kind of court system, although the
intention of the 2006 drafters was clearly that it should be as bare minimum as
possible.”
Morehouse nodded. “Obviously King County and Multnomah County will
need more judges than Adams or Pend Oreille County,” he said. “Or whatever we
decide to rename Multnomah County when that committee on getting rid of all
these goddamned Indian names reports back. But they will have no actual armed
men at their command to strong-arm and intimidate people. A magistrate’s
authority needs to be legal and moral, based not just on respect for his office, but
for the man. No one can demand or receive respect when the whole state and
society that empowers him is oppressive and corrupt from top to bottom.
“The Republic’s judges and the courts are there to try cases and make
determinations of fact, not to make law all off their own bat and according to their
own whims, or according to their own liberal politics as was the case under the
U.S.A. Law is made by the National Convention, or Parliament or whatever we
decide to call the legislative branch. Judges in the Republic can’t just order people
to do this and that, like in America. Any and all enforcement requires the
concurrence of the state in the form of the Guard. One of the worst aspects of the
old system was finding yourself in a courtroom surrounded by enemies and being
afraid to speak the truth even when truth was on your side, because the judge had
armed men at his beck and call and the power to lock people up for so-called
contempt of court, the judge himself of course defining what constituted contempt.
It allowed weak and sneaking little men in black robes to exercise power and
authority which they neither earned nor deserved. Our judges have to command
respect and obedience through wisdom and justice, not institutional terrorism.”
Art Flowers spoke up. “Again, we need to bear in mind that the electorate
will be composed only of citizens who have already demonstrated civic
responsibility in order to earn their vote, I think that will alleviate a lot of the
corruption and cronyism and bribery and general sleaze that flourished under
democracy. Hope so, anyway.”
“That and the fact that we’re not going to have that much money to go
around bribing cops and officials,” put in Ray Ridgeway. “When you don’t live in
one big fleshpot and shopping mall, with all kinds of artificial desires and
commercially created consumer greed, the motivations for corruption are
correspondingly diminished.”
“Less temptation, less corruption,” said Fiona Bonnar.
“But we need to leave the Civil Guard a separate body, independent of local
government,” Flowers continued. “Part of the Guard’s function will be to assist
civil authority, i.e. the sheriff and the judiciary, but the Guard can’t actually be
under the command of local officials. That’s where your skullduggery starts
seeping into the system.”
“So what else are they debating out there?” asked Morehouse.
“People are also confused about the very idea of abolishing the states
altogether,” said Barrow. “Some of them want to know why we can’t have a state
and a federal government just like before. I’ve tried to explain that in a country the
size of the Republic it’s not necessary to have any middle level of government, as
well as being incredibly expensive and wasteful.”
Salvatore laughed and shook his head. “Many of these people joined the
revolt over the crushing taxes that paid for war after war in the Middle East, not to
mention giving every nigger and beaner in America his own mortgage which he
then defaulted on, not to mention the attempt to create a national health care
system that gave blacks and browns free care while whites paid for it, hell, you
guys remember how it was. Do they really want to pay taxes now to support an
extra tier of bureaucracy that was created in the days of horse and wagon and the
steam locomotive? Something we don’t really need anymore in the twenty-first
century of instantaneous communication and rapid mass transit?”
“People are going to want a lot of things just like before,” said Morehouse.
“They naturally long for the familiar. There’s still an awful lot of white people out
there who honestly believe it’s possible to restore the old American Dream, just
without all the niggers and the bullshit. They don’t understand that the Iron Dream
is what we have to shoot for, to make sure we have any future at all.”
“It’s hard for them to internalize new concepts,” agreed Salvatore. “I think
decentralization can help reassure them. If we can disperse as much state
infrastructure as we can to places like Spokane and Boise and Missoula and
Cheyenne, so forth and so on, it will not only serve government and defense policy
and spread the jobs and wealth around, but it will keep the population reassured. I
think a lot of the people east of the Cascades are afraid their voices and their
interests will be drowned out by the big cities along the I-5 corridor, like happened
under ZOG. We don’t want to give them the impression that they’ve exchanged
one big bureaucratic regime on the east coast for one on the west coast.”
“Any more serious problems?” asked Morehouse.
“We’re getting some static on the concept of national service for young
people,” said Barrow.
“Absolutely essential!” said Bresler from Commerce and Industry.
“What’s the beef?” asked Morehouse.
“So far the proposed requirement is one year in the Labor Service and two
years in the military for boys, two years Labor Service for girls. We have some
people who want to put in loopholes for the draft, kind of like what used to exist
under the U.S.A., college exemptions and so forth. Not only for military
conscription itself, but for the Labor Service. Especially for the Labor Service. I
hate to say it, but I think we’ve actually had some damned lobbyists creep in
already, people putting certain delegates up to things, including trying to make sure
there’s some way little mall rat Richie Rich Junior doesn’t have to spend a year out
of high school hauling garbage or swinging a pick and shovel.”
“That’s a big-ass negatory,” said Morgan flatly. “We allow that, we’re
opening the door to a goddamned class system in the Republic with the Party and
the rich on the top, like in the Soviet Union. That will be a weakness ZOG will
exploit to destroy us someday. One of the biggest problems we had under the old
order was all these pale Beavis and Buttheads who got to the age of thirty without
ever having to work a single day in their lives.”
“I’m in full agreement,” said Morehouse. “Hang tough on national service
Frank, and let everybody know the government is backing you up on this. Every
young person works in the Labor Service and the men serve in the army first. Then
they go on to college and the rest of their lives. And every man in this country is
going to have to be a soldier, at least part time. Our enemies in the United States
and Aztlan will always outnumber us.”
“Next bone of contention is whether or not girls will be able to choose
military service in lieu of the Labor Service, and for how long?” reported Barrow.
“A lot of Christians and general Neanderthal male chauvinist types want to go back
to an all-male army.”
“Choose the military as a career? Of course,” said Morehouse. “Our female
comrades who fought in the NVA have earned them that right. I’m thinking of
Cathy Frost and Melanie Young. I’m thinking of that little Threesec girl of
seventeen who climbed up on top of that I-5 bridge and called down our artillery a
few days ago. In the face of examples like that, we’re supposed to tell our women
they have to stay home and bake cookies and knit sweaters for the boys in
uniform? Horse shit.”
“As a substitute for the Labor Service, no,” said Stanhope emphatically.
“Red nailed it. The main thing about the Labor Service has to be that everybody’s
kid serves, rich and poor, male and female alike. Their years of national service
through work and the military has to become simply a part of a young man or
woman’s coming of age in the Northwest Republic, something everybody does
without question. Nobody phones it in, nobody gets a pass, like they got a pass on
responsibility in America. I’m with John on this. You start giving certain kids
exemptions or diddling around with their conditions, especially if they are the
children of Party people, and you have the beginnings of a privileged élite, which
is the slippery slope that eventually created ZOG. I myself grew up in that kind of
élite, fancy prep school, Skull and Bones, where none of us rich punks would have
been caught dead with a shovel in our hand or wearing a uniform, and I can tell
you first-hand what kind of person it produces. Not the kind we want in our
Republic. That’s one of the reasons Marxist Communism never worked well in
practice. The Communist Party bureaucracy, the nomenklatura, became the Soviet
Union’s new nobility, and we can’t allow that to happen here.”
Bresler spoke up. “Not only is it vitally important that all young men and
women go through that experience with one another, but frankly, the Republic is
going to need their labor. We don’t have Mexicans any more to dig our ditches and
haul our garbage. There’s a lot of work to be done out there. Rebuilding Portland
alone is going to be a nightmare.”
“Tell me about it,” agreed Ray Ridgeway glumly. “I have to find the money
to pay for it.”
Barrow said, “Some of the delegates are proposing a maternity exemption
from national service for girls in the name of eugenics, but some others, mostly the
more strait-laced Christian types, are complaining that this will encourage teenaged
pregnancy.”
“Good!” said Morehouse. “We want to encourage teenaged marriage and
pregnancy, since the overriding national imperative has to be that there must be
more of us. Right now white people under the age of sixty are only eight per cent
of the planet’s population, and white women of childbearing age are less than three
percent. We have to get those numbers up!”
“But won’t that lead to a situation where girls are encouraged to get
pregnant to get out of Labor Service?” asked Fiona Bonnar.
“If bringing new white lives into the world isn’t one of the highest forms of
national service, I don’t know what is,” commented Jennings.
“Pregnant girls can still do office work or assemble widgets on an assembly
line or something,” said Flowers.
“Again, let’s wait and see what the relevant committee of the Convention
comes up with,” said Morehouse.
Jennings spoke again. “By the way, before I forget, at some point soon I
need to get with all of you about your use of computers and internet connection in
your departments. As incredible as it may sound to someone raised on the
information highway, I think we’re going to need to learn to do without the internet
for a while. The government will have to, anyway. It’s essential that the NAR take
precautions against virus attacks originating in the United States and Israel, some
of which have already been reported. With or without official sanction, someone is
already trying to shut us down. A lot of private sector networks have already been
infected and in some cases crashed. Yes, I know, we have some real hotshot
computer geeks from the NVA who can work up all kinds of firewalls and
whatnot, but right now if we rely on computer networks for vital functions, in our
present shaky state of newborn existence, a major system crash in Defense or
Security or Commerce and Industry could be very serious. My personal
recommendation is that we don’t rely on any kind of computer system with any
connection to the internet, and we probably need to be leery of using local area
networks in our offices as well, even without an internet connection. Some damned
spy might sneak in with a thumb drive in his pocket containing a virus, and load it
onto one of our government machines and infect and destroy vital data. This
probably means going back to filing cabinets and typewriters for most of our
government offices, or at least stand-alone word processors and PCs. I’m sure if
we dig around in the basements and back rooms in a former state capitol, the home
of bureaucracy, we can find some of that stuff gathering dust.”
“To be honest, I wouldn’t be sorry to see that happen in any case,” said
Morehouse. “All of you know that I have always considered the internet to be a
mixed blessing at best. Right, Ray, you’re up next. What have we got in our
national wallet?”
“A fair amount, or we will have,” said Ridgeway. “When the top nine
American megabanks froze their Northwest customers’ assets, they not only pissed
off their millions of depositors, they opened the door for us to nationalize the
banks. Which we would have done anyway, but now we have an excellent fig leaf
to cover that decision. I’ve taken the liberty of declaring the assets of all private
financial institutions to be state property, which we will hold in trusteeship for the
depositors to prevent any attempts to move the cash out of the country. Acting on
my authority, guards are being posted on most of the branches to make sure there’s
no funny stuff, no attempt to remove cash reserves and make off with them, so
forth and so on. By the way, thanks for the manpower on that, Art.”
“Technically speaking, as of yesterday all police officers in the Northwest
who have remained at their posts are now members of the Civil Guard, but it’s
been an interesting exercise for me to see how many of them will obey orders
coming from the Ministry of Justice,” said Flowers. “About eighty percent seem to
be complying, especially since it involves preventing bank robbery, which is in
fact what cops are supposed to do, aren’t they?”
“Most banks have at least a skeleton staff remaining and they’re still open,
although with limited hours, and most ATM machines are still working,”
Ridgeway went on. “There have been some runs on some of these institutions,
those that haven’t been frozen by their own home offices, but that seems to be
leveling off now that the Cabinet has issued our assurance that everybody’s money
is still theirs, and we’re not going to confiscate it all. One of the many rumors the
American media is planting. I think that one comes from our old buddy Howard
Weintraub.”
“Doesn’t that make it easy for all these rats who are fleeing the Republic to
take their money with them?” asked Morgan.
“Well, it is their money, after all,” Ridgeway reminded him. “Yes, I know,
it’s a terrible hemorrhage of funds, but it would be infinitely worse if we just shut
down the banks and didn’t let anybody take their money out. The whole economy
would grind to a halt, not to mention we’d probably face riots in the streets.”
“How long do you think it will take for us to get a new currency into
circulation, once we decide what it will be, marks or pounds or kwatloos or
whatever?” asked Morehouse. “I don’t like the idea of using dollars. Dollars have
too much connection with the old order.”
“My recommendation is that we hold off for at least a year on that, and for
the time being allow Federal Reserve notes to be the official legal tender,” said
Ridgeway. “That may lead to a money shortage, but paradoxically that will help us
as we ease into the substitution of the Republic’s own legal tender. We don’t want
to rush into this, because there are still a lot of variables. For example, we don’t
know how much gold and silver we’re going to have in reserve. We have to base
our currency on something, at least until we can put together an economy based on
Hjalmar Schacht’s productivity-based system, which is the way we need to go, not
just print it at the touch of a computer function key like the Federal Reserve. Hell,
maybe even platinum if we can get hold of enough of it.
“A lot of that will depend on what we can seize from the enemy’s
abandoned assets, Jewish and non-white property. Depending on how fast they
bugged out, there is a whole treasure trove of real estate, bank accounts, safe
deposit boxes, and goodies they’re leaving behind, anything they couldn’t carry
with them in their rush to get the hell out of Dodge. Once we get a new currency
accepted and designed, and we acquire the technical capacity and the special paper
to print it, I recommend a period of transition of at least six months after that
before the changeover is complete and the U.S. dollar officially becomes foreign
exchange. Who’s that character heading the Convention’s currency committee?”
“A guy named Brian Mackintosh, NVA man from Corvallis,” Barrow told
him. “Fought with Billy Basquine’s Column. He’s a coin collector and very big on
silver and gold. I know he wants a new coinage using actual precious metals, with
only a minimal amount of paper money.”
“Good idea in theory, but like I said, first we have to get hold of the gold and
silver to coin with,” said Ridgeway. “If he’s a coin man, there are all kinds of
places that have loads of precious metals to mint collector coins, and since most of
them are run by people who have at least some degree of sympathy for the
Republic, I would think some could be encouraged to move their operations here.
We will need their expertise. Then there’s also the possibility of backing our new
bank notes with precious gems, diamonds and emeralds and such, which the enemy
may have left behind. Frank, first break tonight, could you hunt him up if he’s still
in the building and introduce us? Or if he’s already left, could you track him down
sometime tomorrow and ask him to get in touch with me so we can set up a
meeting?”
“Will do,” said Barrow.
“Our main source of revenue during the first year, until we can figure out
where we stand on currency and taxes, will have to be the spoils of war,”
Ridgeway went on. “To the victor go the spoils, and fortunately for us we’re the
victors. I have 32 people working for me now, and today I assigned over half of
them to track down and identify potential assets of our former enemies to be
nationalized, including corporate assets, which is a damned long list. Those lists
we made up before Longview, during the war, are proving to be invaluable, but
there’s a lot more out there. Basically, anything that was the property of Jews or
Asians or certain large corporations can be assumed to be the proceeds of theft or
deception or general criminal activity, in the sense that they came here to this land
to take what was ours, and if they have it, now it’s ours again. If they left it behind,
it goes into the Republic’s kitty. Houses, land, businesses, commercial premises
and manufacturing plants—that ought to interest you, Gary—bank accounts, cash,
jewelry we can melt down for Comrade Mackintosh’s new coinage, personal
possessions, their goddamned furniture, everything.”
“Race and Resettlement will want first dibs on the real estate,” said Brennan.
“Have you seen the news footage on the interstates? We have as many people
coming into the Republic as are leaving. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we
actually ended up with a net population gain, and we’re going to need someplace
to house new migrants.”
“Yes, I understand that, Pat,” agreed Ridgeway. “You get first refusal on
actual housing, but there will be plenty of commercial and undeveloped real estate
that we can sell to the private sector, assuming the private sector has any money to
buy it. We’ll probably end up land rich and cash poor. John, I’m going to need
some muscle to do a little organized looting for the public good, more than the
Ministry of Justice and our day-old Civil Guard can provide. Thousands of men in
the long run, to track down every enemy asset and make sure it ends up in the
Treasury and not in somebody’s sticky fingers. Once people in the Northwest
realize there’s an Aladdin’s cave of former Unionist wealth lying around,
everybody’s going to want to help themselves. Okay, if the local white people want
to boost some absconded kike’s Lexus or clean out some dothead’s living room, or
nick some fled FBI man’s power tools out of his garage, fair enough. These people
were parasites, they stole their wealth from our Folk, and although as a rule I’m not
comfortable countenancing theft, in a sense I can understand that kind of thing.
Fog of war, and all that. But the Republic has dibs on the big ticket items like
money, real property, jewelry and precious metals. We’re going to have to make it
for a while on this serendipitous windfall, or inheritance, or whatever you want to
call it, until we can get our own economy and monetary system up and running,
and that may take time. We’re going to have to stretch this inheritance for quite a
while.”
“Send me an estimate of how many troops you’ll need and I’ll second them
to Finance,” said Morgan. “We have still got thousands of trainees going through
the depots in Centralia and Salem and Seattle. I can get you the manpower.”
“Better check with me and Frank first on the manpower, John,” said
Morehouse grimly. “There’s still fighting to be done, I’m sorry to say. Maybe we
can add some of Ray’s organized looting sprees to the mission of Force 101.”
“What’s Force 101?” asked Ridgeway.
“We need to get into that now,” said Morehouse.
John Corbett Morgan got up from his seat, went to the door and beckoned
someone in from the hallway outside. A block-like young man with a fiery red
beard and burning blue eyes walked in dressed in NDF tiger-striped camos. He
stood to attention and saluted Morehouse and the Cabinet table in general. Morgan
introduced him. “For those of you comrades who don’t know him, this is
Commandant David Leach of the Ellensburg Flying column, now Colonel Leach
of the NDF. Some of you may remember him as one of the few Volunteers from
the Olympic Flying Column who survived the Ravenhill ambush. [See The Hill of
the Ravens by the author.]
“If I may, sir, I’d just like mention to Minister Bonnar that I had the honor of
serving with your sister Anne when I was with the Olympic Column,” said Leach.
“She was a brave soldier and a true comrade, ma’am.”
“She was indeed,” agreed Fiona sadly. “Thank you, Colonel.”
“Colonel Leach will be commanding a special action group of around two
thousand men,” Morgan continued. “They have been hand-picked in a large
measure from NVA veterans of the revolt, but also some who have joined us since
the July Days. Mostly men who lost wives and daughters to niggers or muds or
ZOG, if you want to know the truth. Some of them will be drawn from O.C.
Oglevy’s North Idaho Rangers partisan unit, an outfit that Comrade Leach also
served with before he moved to Ellensburg and took over the Column there. This
corps will be referred to as Force 101. Colonel Leach will be reporting directly to
me, and we will both be working closely with General Barrow and the Third
Section, or I guess the Bureau of State Security as it will be soon whenever things
get formalized. I will not just be in nominal charge, I will be participating in Force
101’s operations myself, by way of accepting responsibility. I will not order men
on a mission like this, and then stand back and try to keep my own hands clean.”
“What mission is that?” asked Jennings.
Red Morehouse answered him. “As you know, while almost all of the actual
American military and administrative personnel have now been withdrawn from
the Northwest, large sections of the country have yet to be occupied and
assimilated into the Republic, which is a different and more complex process than
simply chasing the American bureaucrats and the local Chamber of Commerce out.
General Barrow, this is part of your Security portfolio, I believe? Can you bring us
up to speed?”
“Okay, here’s the sitch.” said Barrow “There are currently loyalist
paramilitaries and vigilantes who have seized temporary control in a lot of places,
mostly small towns east of the Cascades and over in Idaho and Montana. Wyoming
especially is in free fall. We weren’t expecting to get that state at Longview, and
we never had that many people down there to begin with, and so we’re really
having to scramble. We have to move fast, and stomp on these Amurrican snakes
before they can get organized and maybe provoke some kind of new intervention
on the part of the United States, or even the goddamned United Nations. The
Republic’s political control of the country is now more or less firmed up in the
major cities, and also certain of our own liberated zones that the NVA established
during the revolt, like the Oregon north shore, thanks to Zack Hatfield and his
Wild Bunch boys. But the Northwest is a big place. There are whole huge swaths
of territory that saw little or no action during the War of Independence, because
they were so out of the way and ironically, also because they were so white. There
was no point in the NVA going where there was nobody to shoot. A lot of the
people in these little towns and rural areas are confused. They’re still infected with
liberalism and in some cases with Zionism through their churches. They are ripe
for deception and victimization by counterrevolutionary elements. We don’t want
to allow any kind of Unionist reactionary campaign to develop in the countryside.
Those can be very difficult to stop. Hell, the entire might of the United States of
America couldn’t stop us under similar circumstances.”
“So this Force 101 will be dealing with loyalist vigilantes and John Wayne
wannabes?” asked Salvatore.
“Not just them, sir,” Colonel Leach answered him. “Officially Force 101 is a
rapid response team that will be used to put out brushfires in these small towns
where a few idiots decide they don’t want to be ruled by Natsies who is agin’ the
Bible, and they hoist up the Masonic dishrag again. That will certainly be part of
our remit, yes. But only part of it. We will also be performing a quiet but thorough
cleansing of the entire country.”
“Cleansing?” asked Jennings.
“We’re going to take out the last of the trash left over from the revolt and
from all the years before, sir,” Leach told him.
“You’re going to kill people,” said Fiona Bonnar accusingly.
“Quite a few people, yes ma’am,” confirmed Leach. “Race-mixers, drug
dealers, lefties and liberals of every conceivable stripe, bugger boys and dykes,
American informers and collaborators from the past five years and before, Union
sympathizers who gave concrete aid and comfort to the Americans and FATPO,
the last dregs of Amurrica. Almost all of these kinds of people have had sense
enough to get the hell out by now. You can see them running away when you flick
on the TV. The interstates going out of the Republic are clogged with their cars as
they flee from the people and the land they have betrayed. But there will be some
who stay behind, either because they hope to continue to do harm to our new
country, or they think the Americans will be coming back soon and they can cash
in, or else because they think we’ve forgotten who they are and what they’ve done,
and they can hide from us and resume some kind of normal lives as if nothing ever
happened. But we haven’t forgotten. We will never forget, and we will never
forgive. That much we’ve learned from the Jews. The Northwest Republic needs a
clean start, comrades. No one who actively aided the tyrant gets to be in on that.”
Ray Ridgeway, who was sitting next to Red Morehouse, made a note on the
yellow legal pad in front of him. One of Oglevy’s maniacs? Morehouse glanced
down at it and nodded. Ridgeway added on the pad, Why not use Oglevy himself?
Sounds right up his alley.
Morehouse reached over and scribbled, We want to kill the rats, not burn
down the barn. He looked over at Public Health Minister Bonnar. “Fi, I know this
sounds bad. It is bad, and I for one have no intention of trying to deny that fact or
whitewash all this. We’re all going to be racking up some bad karma over Force
101. But Colonel Leach is right. We have to start with a completely clean slate. We
can’t leave all these problem people from the old days lurking around below the
surface or on the edges, where they may do harm. The Americans and world Jewry
are going to be doing their level best to strangle our new nation in the cradle, and
we have to deal with anyone who might help them, without hesitation and without
mercy. We can’t risk erring on the side of clemency. Mercy to an enemy is cruelty
to one’s own, and in this case, the very existence of the white race is at stake. We
dare not turn away from our duty.”
Barrow weighed in. “Fiona, we cannot allow a potential fifth column to
remain in our midst out of misplaced compassion. We won’t be able to get all of
those who secretly yearn for the old order that gave them such luxury and allowed
them to wallow in such beastly pleasures in return for their souls, but by meting
out condign punishment to a few, we can damned well send a message to the rest
of them that the old days are gone and they’d bloody well better wake up and smell
the coffee. In any event, are there any among us here whose hands are clean? I
seem to recall that a few years ago, you delivered some packages for the NVA.
Abortion clinics were your specialty, I believe?”
“Yes,” replied Bonnar with a grim smile. “I haven’t forgotten, and I am
willing to answer for what I did to God if He so demands of me when the time
comes. That was necessary to save the lives of unborn children.”
“And with all due respect, ma’am, this is necessary to save the life of our
newly born nation,” said Leach briskly.
“Frank, John, what guarantee can you give us that only the guilty will suffer
in these coming purges or whatever you want to call them?” persisted Bonnar. “We
can’t turn this into the French Revolution or the Stalin era, with white people being
executed on the word of anonymous informers who may well be vindictive former
spouses, or disgruntled employees, or people with personal grudges to settle.”
“Absolute, one-hundred per cent cast-iron guarantee? None,” said Barrow.
“I will say this much: Force 101 and the new Bureau of State Security will not act
on simple denunciation. They have been provided with detailed lists of suspect
persons that are the result of many years of work on the part of the Third Section,
during the revolt and also in the old Party days before that. No one is on those lists
without a reason, Fi.”
Colonel Leach addressed her. “Madam Minister, I’ve looked over those lists
and examined every name we’ve been given so far by Minister Barrow’s people,
every one of which has been counterchecked and signed off on by Dan McGrew
and Heather Redmond. If you know those two comrades, you know they would
only list the really bad actors. There are tens of thousands of names, and I know
that sounds like a lot, but if it makes you feel any better, we probably won’t catch
most of them. I suspect they’ll be like the Jews on the Eastern Front during the
Second World War who hooked up and booked when they heard the SS was
coming. The majority of the names on the lists are white people who are proven or
reliably reported to us to have engaged in sexual relations with niggers, Jews or
other non-whites, for which as far as I’m concerned there is no excuse. In someone
like that, the liberal sickness has gone too far, and they are beyond cure or
redemption. There are also a lot of faggots and dykes who would have to be crazy
to stick around waiting for the axe to fall, and who probably won’t. Then there’s
informers, or at least people whom we believe to a moral certainty were informers.
It looks like the FBI and other retreating feds and cops destroyed their hard drives
and as many of their records as they could, but Third Section wasn’t just sitting on
their hands for the past five years, and they know who did what. Can I swear to
you that innocent people haven’t ended up on those lists by accident or mistake?
No, ma’am, I can’t. But I will tell you this: in any specific case that comes to my
own attention, if there is any doubt in my mind at all, we will hold the person in
question in custody and refer them to BOSS for further investigation, until their
status can be cleared up. I’m afraid that’s as good as it’s going to get.”
“Fiona, Dan and Heather can’t be here tonight because they’re taking care of
some special work for us,” Morehouse told her kindly. “But they should be back in
town in a couple of days. What say I arrange for you to sit down with them? This
government as a whole has a heavy burden to shoulder in this matter. It is what it
is. In order for you to do the kind of good things for our people I know you want to
do in the field of health and medicine, you have to shoulder part of it, too. We’ll
give you all the help and reassurance we can.”
“I’m not some hysterical female who faints at the sight of blood, Red,”
replied Bonnar dourly. “Neither was my sister who died at Ravenhill. I think you
all know that about me. It’s just that there has been so much terrible suffering and
injustice in this land for so long, and I don’t mean only for the past five years of
the revolt. I know there still has to be more blood. I just want to make sure it’s the
blood of the guilty.”
“As much as it is humanly possible for us to make sure of that, it will be,”
Morehouse assured her. He stood up. “Right, let’s take a supper break and see if
we can be back here by seven o’clock.”
“Frank, could you check around outside and see if you can buttonhole that
fellow Mackintosh for me?” Ridgeway reminded him.
“Sure thing,” said Barrow.
“Oh, one more thing, before I forget,” said Morehouse as they arose from
the table. “I have the honor to report that the Old Man has now arrived on the
Republic’s soil. I was told that his plane landed at Sea-Tac just before we began
tonight’s meeting.” There was an outburst of applause and cheering from the
people in the room.
“It was that threat to send O.C. Oglevy and the boys down to Florence to
collect him that made the bastards let him go,” chuckled Morgan.
“Probably,” replied Morehouse with a smile. “We were going to schedule a
big formal welcome at the airport, brass band and speeches and the whole nine
yards, but he vetoed it. There will, however, be a formal welcome for him
tomorrow night at six p.m. in the Reception Room, down the hall here. Dress
uniform for those of us who have them. And guys, I know General Order Number
Ten goes out at midnight tonight and so there will be beer and cocktails and
whatnot tomorrow night, but let’s not let him be confronted by the heroes who won
our Homeland as a bunch of staggering drunks whooping and waving guns in the
air, shall we?”
“He’d probably just think he’s back on Glenn Miller’s farm,” said Morgan.
II. Daly Avenue
(34 days after Longview)
“Mightier than the tread of marching armies is the power of an idea
whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
The Northwest American Republic arrived in Missoula, Montana, in the
early morning hours of the Monday after Thanksgiving, along with the first major
snowfall of the year. Forty-year-old Amber Myers awoke in the bedroom of her
affluent middle-class home on Daly Avenue in Missoula’s University District, with
the first soft snowy light outside whitening the windows. She had not slept well; it
was known that the Nationalist army was approaching the city, but no one seemed
able or willing to give the public any details. As she lay in bed she heard muffled
noises in the street outside, men’s voices and the rumble of engines. She got up,
put on her robe and looked out the window.
A thick white curtain of snow was falling on Daly Avenue, obscuring
everything in a floating white curtain, muffling the sky and houses and rooftops.
Out on the street in front of her house, Amber could see a number of trucks and
Humvees with snow tires and rattling chains rolling slowly by, painted in
camouflage, with blue, white and green roundels on the doors. By the glow of their
headlights, and beneath the streetlights that were still on in the white dawn, Amber
could see files of armed men in camouflage field jackets and coal-scuttle helmets
moving eastward down the street along both sidewalks. Their breath frosted in the
freezing air, and their rifles were held at the ready. The column was moving
toward the University of Montana campus a few blocks down.
Amber woke up her husband, Doctor Clancy Myers, and whispered to him
in terror, “They’re here!”
“Are the kids all right?” demanded Clancy, lifting himself up in bed, still
groggy from sleep.
“Yes,” Amber told him. “The Nazis haven’t come in the house. They’re out
on the street. I think they’re occupying the campus.”
“I thought we had more time,” mumbled Clancy. “At least until the
Christmas break. Not that there are many students left on campus. The news
reports said the towns and cities to the west of here were resisting them. They
weren’t due for weeks!”
“And where were the media getting their information?” raved Amber. “Six
months ago they were telling everybody that the FBI and FATPO had the racist
terrorists on the run, and everything would be returning to normal soon! Then the
President went on national television and told us she was talking to the sons of
bitches, but oh, no, not to worry! She was just doing that to get them to play nice,
and be reasonable, and stop murdering people. Chelsea and her mother would
never hand us over to be ruled by fascist sociopaths, oh, no, that would never
happen! How many times were we assured of that? The goddamned media don’t
know anything about what’s going on in this country, any more than anyone else
does! They’ve spent the past six months reading government press releases like
parrots, while that bitch in the White House and her hag of a mother sold the
Northwest out because keeping us free was getting to be too expensive! And the
so-called Missoula Patriotic Committee have had their heads up their asses ever
since this horrible thing happened. We should have at least tried to resist!”
“Yes, so you’ve said,” snapped Clancy, sitting up on the side of the bed.
“Resist with what? All the Patriotic Committee was ever able to put together was a
bunch of drunken cowboys waving their deer rifles and American flags in the air
like John Wayne, all of whom seem to have vanished when the first fascist tanks
actually rolled over the Bitterroot. Guess when it came time to shit or get off the
pot, or should I say shoot or get off the pot, our wannabe John Waynes had more
sense than they let on. Come on, Amber, you saw what these people did to
Portland! They defeated the United States Marine Corps, for God’s sake! How the
hell are we supposed to fight that? They seem to have conjured an army up out of
the earth, God knows how.”
“Better to die on our feet than live on our knees!” snapped Amber.
“I wonder if you would still say that when the artillery shells and the bombs
started falling in our own back yard?” asked her husband. “Where would we have
hidden the children? Where would we be safe?” His wife remained silent. “Oh,
yes, I forgot, I’m not supposed to be safe. I’m supposed to be showing my middleaged macho in this time of crisis. Yes, I could well see me on a barricade out on
Highway 93, freezing my ass off in the snow,” Clancy went on with a sigh. “With
my forty extra pounds, and my varicose veins, and my glasses all fogged up,
fumbling around in mittens with some rifle I’d just fired for the first time the day
before, maybe. Going up against thousands of bearded, tattooed, homicidal
psychopaths armed to the teeth, with tanks and artillery to back them up, who have
just run the entire United States military out of the Pacific Northwest. That would
be a truly Quixotic way to throw away a PhD in English literature. My doctoral
thesis on Jack Kerouac would stand me in good stead out there on the ramparts of
glory, for all of two minutes, and then you would be a widow and my children
would be without a father. A rather high price to pay for a moment of drama, don’t
you think? I’m sorry if you think I’m a coward, Ammy. I’m not. But I just don’t
see anything brave about throwing my life away and leaving you guys behind to
live with the result.”
“Then if you won’t fight for them, what’s going to happen to our children
now, Clancy?” sobbed Amber. “I don’t understand! How could President Clinton
have betrayed us like this?” she wailed.
“She’s a politician, she’s a Democrat, and beyond that she’s a Clinton,” said
Clancy wearily. “It’s what she does.”
Amber and Clancy went downstairs into the living room, where they found
their two children Kevin and Georgia, both still in their pajamas and staring out the
picture window through the snow at the column of soldiers and vehicles. “Mom,
Dad, they’re here! They’ve got tanks!” cried ten-year-old Georgia in excitement.
“Silly Peanut, those aren’t tanks, they’re Strykers,” said Kevin with the
superiority of a 13-year-old video game expert. “They captured them from the
Americans.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! You are an American, Kevin Myers, and don’t you ever
forget it!” snapped Amber angrily.
“Then so are they,” said Kevin, pointing to the passing NDF column outside
the window.
“No, they are not! They’re all foreigners and criminals and crazy people!”
said his mother. She stopped herself; Amber was angry and terrified, but she
wasn’t stupid. She had followed the news over the past five years, and she knew
her statement wasn’t true, as irritating as she found the fact. She also knew that her
son knew it. As shocking as Amber still found the fact, the Myers family had
actually known neighbors and friends, or at least acquaintances, who had gone
with the Nationalists and even the NVA itself. “All right, maybe some of them
were born here,” she conceded. “But they’re certainly criminals, and what they
have done to the Northwest and to the country as a whole is unforgivable. I don’t
know why they have done this. I never had anything against people with a different
skin color, and we have raised you children not to harbor that kind of hatred either.
They have to be crazy, that’s all. Anyone who commits terrorism and murder for
any cause is by definition insane.”
“Is Jenny crazy, Mom?” asked Georgia in a small voice. Jenny Campbell
had been Georgia’s favorite babysitter in the days before she had to go on the
bounce with the NVA. “Is she bad?”
“Honey, Jenny is—well, she’s very wrong to do what she’s done, is all,”
said Amber lamely.
“Does this mean that I can hang out with Bobby Campbell again now?”
asked Kevin eagerly. He had been forbidden his best friend’s company for a long
time. “It might help you guys to get on the good side of the new bosses.”
“You know, that might not be a bad idea,” said Clancy slowly.
“Oh, for … Clancy!” yelped Amber. “We cut the Campbells off when we
found out they were terrorist sympathizers and their daughter was a murderer, and
that is still the case! We will never, ever associate with people like that!”
“I don’t know how much choice we will have, dear,” said Clancy soothingly.
“People like that, as you put it, seem to be in charge now. Let’s see if we can find
out what’s going on.”
They turned on the television to their local CBS channel, KPAX-TV,
expecting to see handsome morning newscaster Brad Jensen with his flawlessly
capped teeth, as usual. Instead, what they saw was the KPAX news desk, but no
Brad in the Morning. Seated behind it, fiddling with a clip-on microphone he was
trying to attach to his tunic, was a young man with a sandy beard, wearing NDF
tiger-stripes and a billed Alpine cap. The sight of the dreaded National Socialist
eagle emblem on both cap and fatigue tunic jarred Amber and Clancy Myers;
somehow the eagle right there on the sacred screen itself made it all seem real, in a
way that none of the news over the past few months had done.
The young man looked up at the camera, startled. “Huh? We on the air? Oh,
okay.” He sat up straight, “Uh, hey there, all you folks out in TV land. My name’s
Captain Ricky Johnson, Tenth Infantry Brigade, Northwest Defense Force. I’m
originally from down Anaconda way. Mr. Jensen can’t be here this morning. He’s
kind of indisposed. Well, folks, if you’ve been looking out your windows this
morning, you know that here we are, and here we’re staying,” the young soldier
told them cheerfully. “Over the next few months, we’re gonna be bringing the city
of Missoula formally into the Northwest American Republic, as per the Longview
Treaty. I guess by now you people living here all pretty much know the details of
that treaty as it applies to Montana, but just to re-cap, everything west of Interstate
15 is now part of the Republic, and everything east of 15 still belongs to the
goddamned Jews. Helena and Great Falls get split right down the middle.
“In case you’re wondering why you didn’t hear any shooting or sirens or
explosions last night when we moved in, it’s because your so-called Patriotic
Committee, your mayor, the city council, and that bunch of clowns they called a
loyal Amurrican militia all skedaddled when it came down to the wire. They didn’t
want to get what Portland got. But don’t get me wrong, I ain’t criticizing. We’re all
glad they ran. There’s been enough fighting and killing, and it’s time to stop all
that shit and get this show on the road. Huh?” A female voice off camera was
saying something to Johnson. “Well, ma’am, in case you hadn’t noticed, the
Federal Communications Commission don’t have no say any more about what
words we can we say on the air, but you’re right. Folks, I apologize for my
language just now. No point in taking the Northwest away from the niggers if
we’re gonna keep talking like ‘em. I’ll do my best to keep it clean from here on in.
Don’t worry, you won’t have to put up with me for long. We’ll be getting
somebody in here to do the news who’s more professional than me, and a da—a
sight better looking, as soon as we can.”
Johnson went on, “For now, I just want to let you folks know in a general
way what’s going on, and talk at you about how you can make this a whole lot
easier for everybody. I know those yay-hoos from the Patriotic Committee have
been telling you for the past month that the NDF is gonna come in here whooping
and shooting up the town, and rapin’ your grandmothers, and all kinds of crap like
that. Pardon me, all kinds of nonsense like that. That’s just not true. We are now
the legitimate government in Missoula, and you folks out there are our fellow
white people and fellow citizens. Truth be told, we’ve been doing all this for the
past five years as much for you as for ourselves.
“The first thing we want to do is make sure that essential services remain
open,” continued Captain Johnson, as Clancy and Amber Myers stared at the
screen in stupefaction. “We’re asking first and foremost, that snow plow and salt
truck drivers report to work as scheduled. We have men who can drive them in the
army, true, and if we have to we’ll clear the streets ourselves, but it’s not really our
job, is it? We also ask that those of you who work in certain fields and provide
essential services report to work as normal. That includes all medical personnel
and firefighters, employees of grocery and hardware stores so people can buy food
and supplies, sanitation and landfill workers so garbage doesn’t pile up in the
streets, and also city utility workers at the power and water and sewage plants. We
don’t want any of those vitally necessary services disrupted in any way, and we are
relying on you to do your duty to your fellow Missoulians, even if you may not
think much of the new Republic or its people at the moment. Don’t worry, we’re
not going to hurt anybody unless you try to hurt us first, or unless you’ve got skin
the color of excrement, in which case you brought it on yourself by being a dumbass and not getting the hell out of our country when you had the chance.”
Johnson paused. “Now, on the other hand, there are in fact some people who
we’re asking to take a few days off until things get sorted out. That includes police,
Missoula County sheriff’s deputies, city and county employees in the
administrative fields, and employees of banks. We want to make sure we don’t
have any unfortunate incidents with police officers who still think they’re the law
in these parts, which they ain’t. There was a bit of a ruckus at the central station
and the county jail last night when we moved in. Don’t worry, nobody was killed,
the boys just had to go upside a couple of dumb-ass Amurrican heads to get them
to look at the clock and understand what time it is, but we want to make sure
nothing worse happens. You guys are going to have to accept the fact that you’re
no longer in charge here, we are. I know it’s going to be hard, so we figure it’s best
we just stay out of each other’s way for a while and let things settle down a bit.
Cops will be called in to your stations in shifts, and we’ll explain to you how
things will work. You’ll be given a chance to go back to work at your old jobs in
law enforcement under the new Northwest Civil Guard, unless it turns out you did
some really bad acts against us back during the war when we were the NVA. But
we’ll deal with everybody on an individual basis.
“I have been told to assure you folks that the bank holiday won’t last more
than a couple of days. We just have to secure all the branches and whatnot on
orders from the Finance Ministry in Olympia, make sure no die-hard Unionist
types go and filch all the cash in the bank vaults and try to drag it off to the U.S.
Not to mention just plain thieves trying to take advantage of the situation. Your
deposits are safe; we’re not confiscating or stealing your money, we’re just making
sure nobody else does. So far as I know, the computer lines are still up and running
in stores, so you should still be able to buy stuff with plastic. In a couple of places
where we’ve moved in the kikes were able to crash the credit and debit card
networks from outside the country, but we got some real slick computer guys in the
NDF, and they’ve gotten the drill down for hacking into these financial systems
and building necessary firewalls and fail-safes, so we can hopefully prevent that
from happening here.”
Johnson leaned forward into the camera. “As far as civil authority goes, for
the time being there ain’t none, since the mayor of Missoula, the city council, and
most of the Chamber of Commerce have lit out for parts unknown. In their
absence, the military administrator for Missoula will be General Dan Macready.
Some time within the next few months, as decided by the provisional government
in Olympia, there will be an election throughout the Republic where all kinds of
public offices will be filled, including municipalities, although candidates and
voting in that election will be restricted to people who meet the new citizenship
requirements, and who are willing to swear an oath of allegiance to the Northwest
American Republic. I don’t know how many of you have actually read the new
Constitution, or at least the bits and pieces of it that have been published in the
newspapers and on the internet, but from now on we don’t just hand out the vote to
any dimwit who happens to have two arms and two legs and a head. That’s how we
got into all the trouble before, letting niggers and drug addicts and illegal aliens
and any damned body vote. Garbage voters vote in garbage politicians.
“No more. From now on citizenship and the right to vote is something that
has to be earned, and right now the only ones who have earned it are those who
fought in the NVA and the NDF. I have been told that there will be ways in which
non-NVA veterans may apply for and receive third-class citizenship, which will
get you one vote. Us guys who put our lives on the line for our race and our new
nation will have two or three votes each, that’s true, but that’s as it should be. And
there’s other ways you can get a vote. For example, one of the things they’re
talking about at the Convention in Olympia is allowing mothers with children to
get third class citizenship right away, so long as you’re willing to take the oath of
loyalty to the Republic. We understand that the results of an election that allows
only NVA and NDF people to vote would be considered morally questionable, and
so for the first couple of years until we can work up a whole new order of society
and a whole new way of doing things, we’ll be kind of playing it by ear.
“Now, one more thing I want to talk about,” Johnson went on in a serious
tone. “I know there are a lot of folks here in Missoula city and county who suffered
during the war, even though they weren’t actually NVA. Their only crime was to
have white skins. There was an especially nasty FATPO unit stationed here in
Missoula, commanded by a monkoid colonel named Pimpin’ Sam Porterfoy, as he
called himself. Gang-banger from the L.A. Bloods. Fine upstanding Amurrican,
was Pimping Sam. You may also remember his second in command, Major
Michael Bonaparte, the Haitian voodoo man. I know I sure as hell do, and his
magic necklace of white babies’ skulls he got from abortion clinics. We all
remember what the Americans did, at least to ordinary white people who didn’t
have one of those nasty-ass little immunity cards issued by Mayor Kirschbaum and
his cronies in the liberal University clique who used to run Missoula. Note my
terminology there: who used to run this town. Not any more!” Johnson said with a
sudden grin.
“Oh, my God, our cards! Our cards!” cried Amber in sudden fear. “We have
to destroy them!” She ran upstairs for her purse.
On the TV screen, Captain Ricky Johnson was speaking on. “There are those
of you who have lost loved ones because of what the United States occupation
forces have done. There are others who have had loved ones disappear, either
shipped to the concentration camps in Nevada, or else simply buried out in the
landfill by Porterfoy and Bonaparte and their thugs. You know who among the
community fought against the Americans, and you know who helped them. No one
on earth could blame some of you for wanting to take vengeance against those who
oppressed and tortured and tyrannized you for five years, but since the actual
perpetrators are gone, you will be tempted to take it out on those collaborators who
remain here.
“Folks, on behalf of the new government of the Northwest American
Republic, I’m asking you not to do that. Let us handle it. Actually, we’re already
doing so. Among the first of our men into the city last night were some gentlemen
from an outfit called Force 101. Those boys specialize in making right what has
been wrong for so long. I’m not going to get into details, but there are some of
your fellow Missoula residents who you won’t be seeing around any more, and
we’re not going deny or conceal that fact. It’s time Amurrica learned that what
goes around, comes around.
“Don’t worry, if you or someone you love was murdered, if your family was
robbed or injured by the Americans during this time, you will have justice and such
compensation as it may be possible to make. If you have something to say, if you
have a serious accusation to make against anyone who helped the tyrant to do
actual harm, or who profited from tyranny, or if you know some white man or
woman who has defiled their body with an animal or someone of the same gender,
then bring it to the new administration down at city hall. Ask for the Force 101 guy
or the Bureau of State Security rep. I promise you will have our full attention.”
Amber ran into the living room with her purse and Clancy’s wallet in her
hand. “My God, do you hear that?” she cried in a shrill voice. “I heard that!
They’re coming after anyone who stayed loyal to America! We have to get rid of
the evidence!”
She pulled out her own wallet from her purse and extracted a laminated card
the size and shape of a driver’s license, bearing her photograph and small
embossed symbols, a Missoula city seal and a FATPO ID number. This was what
had been known in Missoula as a Get Out Of Jail Free Card, or more earthily, a
Back the [expletive of choice] Off Fattie Card. The text asserted that Ms. Amber
Escott-Myers had been fully vetted and triple background-checked by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and the
Intelligence Bureau of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Police Organization. She was
known to be a loyal citizen of the United States, and was therefore entitled to all
due courtesy and assistance from FATPO and the assorted other alphabet soup
agencies who had attempted to suppress the NVA revolt for the past five years.
“Give me yours!” she ordered her husband. Bemused, Clancy handed Amber his
own card from his wallet. She ran into the kitchen, got scissors, and then coming
back into the living room, she meticulously cut both cards into small strips. Then
she balled up several pages of newspaper, threw them into the fireplace, and lit
them on fire with a match, after which she threw all the little pieces of plastic into
the flames.
“Ick! That stinks!” said Georgia, wrinkling her nose.
“They can find out who had the cards from computer records at city hall or
at the old Fattie HQ,” commented Kevin.
“They destroyed the records! They promised they would before they left us
here at the mercy of these kill-crazy Nazi thugs!” wailed Amber.
“Yeah, they promised, but the Fatties were mostly stupid niggers, and they
probably screwed it up,” said Kevin.
“Kevin!” screamed Amber hysterically. “Don’t you ever, ever say that
horrible word in this house or in my presence again, and especially in your sister’s
hearing!”
“Uh, Mom, it’s all right to say nigger now,” said Kevin, gesturing at the
television. “Don’t you get it? No more politically correct bullshit! White people
can say what they really feel now!”
“Get out!” said Amber frigidly. “Get out of my sight, Kevin! Go to your
room and don’t come out until I say you can.”
Kevin complied, shuffling up the stairs. “I’ll just keep on watching the news
on my laptop!” he called down defiantly.
“Clancy, we have to make a decision,” demanded Amber, clicking the
television into mute mode with the remote. “We have got to work up the courage
and make a plan to get out of this city and back into the U.S.A. Even now, even
with the snow, it may not be too late. The news, at least the news channels that are
still in American hands, have been reporting that the roads heading east and south
are still clear. I know that Nazi on TV said the banks will be closed, but we did
take the precaution of drawing that five grand in cash out two weeks ago. Families
have started over on a lot less. We can get to my mother in D.C. on that, for sure.”
“Just leave everything we have here, except what we can get in the Range
Rover?” demanded Clancy. “Ammy, look, we have talked about this and talked
about it. Hell, we’ve talked about nothing else since Longview. I thought we had
finally agreed to stay in our home and not allow ourselves to be driven out.”
“That was before I heard our son utter that—that—that word!” shouted
Amber. “What in God’s name will he be like after a year or two being raised with
Nazi propaganda all around? I’m not going to have a little Hitler Youth in the
house! And what about Georgia? She has blond hair, so these monsters will
probably use her for breeding stock!”
“What’s breeding stock, Mom?” asked Georgia, looking at her own hair with
interest.
“They’re going to make you have blond babies!” wept Amber.
“Uh, Mom, I’m not old enough to have babies yet,” said Georgia. “My sex
education teacher says I have to be at least thirteen or fourteen and wait until my
...”
“Probably better than Kevin being raised by a Gameboy Play Station or
whatever the hell it is he spends all his time with,” sighed Clancy. “I repeat,
Amber, we discussed this at length and we decided to stay.”
“That was when I thought there was still a chance,” argued Amber. “That
was when I thought we were going to fight. When I thought you were going to
fight!” she added bitterly.
“Well, pardon me for being alive,” said Clancy in irritation. “Ammy, I know
a Nazi bullet would have been a lot cheaper than a divorce lawyer, not to mention
providing endless opportunities for you to play the drama queen off the whole
patriotic American widow shtick for the rest of your life, but I’m sorry, I just
couldn’t see my way to going down in a hail of lead gibbering like Sydney Carton
about how it’s a far, far better thing I do!”
“Are you guys talking divorce again?” asked Georgia sadly. They had
forgotten she was in the room,
“Georgie, honey, I think you need to go to your room and get dressed as
well,” said Amber.
“Are Kev and me going to school?” asked Georgia.
“I don’t think so, dear,” said Amber. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We
don’t even know if the schools are open, and when they do open back up they will
probably start teaching you to worship Adolf Hitler and hate black people and
Mexican and Jewish people, which we are not going to allow to happen under any
circumstances whatsoever,” she added with a fierce look at her husband. “Right
now just go upstairs and get dressed, honey, and then we’ll have breakfast and you
and Kevin can make a snowman in the back yard. I don’t want you leaving the
house for a while. It’s not safe outside.”
“And where would we go? Just sponge off your mother?” demanded Clancy.
“Both our jobs are here.”
“Do you still think they’ll let you teach?” Amber asked him. “UM has been
using an inclusive and multiculturally diverse curriculum for years. Do you think
the Nazis won’t find out? What will they do to you when they find out you’ve been
teaching Saul Bellow, James Baldwin and Maya Angelou? What will they do when
they see tapes of your seminars on Armistead Maupin and gay literature?”
“Send me back to teaching Chaucer, Shakespeare, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Mark Twain and Stephen Crane?” suggested Clancy. “I could do that. In fact, I
really think I’d like to do that. Teach real English literature that has stood the test
of time and not just passed a politically correct litmus test. Or Ambrose Bierce.
God, I’d love to do an Ambrose Bierce seminar again!” Amber looked like she was
about to explode into a liberal hissy fit, but she was interrupted.
“Look, Mom!” Georgia cried out suddenly, pointing to the television screen.
“It’s Jenny! Jenny’s on TV!”
Sure enough, Amber looked up and saw Georgia’s former babysitter Jennifer
Campbell standing beside the NDF captain Johnson behind the desk and taking his
microphone. She was wearing not tiger stripes, but an NDF female garrison
uniform with dark green skirt and a khaki blouse, Sam Browne belt, a holstered
pistol, and a black beret. The ever-present eagle was over her buttoned right
pocket. Amber clicked on the sound. “Now didn’t I tell you they’d be sending in
somebody who’s a lot easier on the eyeballs than me?” Johnson was saying with a
laugh. “It’s all yours, ma’am. Take her away!”
“Thanks, Rick,” said Jenny, seating herself behind the desk. “I’m Captain
Jennifer Stockdale, General Macready’s press secretary, and I will be doing the
morning and evening news for a while here on KPAX-TV.”
“I thought Jenny’s last name was Campbell,” said Georgia.
“She must have married that psychotic killer Jason Stockdale, the man
whose picture those FBI agents showed us when they came here that time,” said
Amber. “In which case her name is now Jennifer Campbell-Stockdale. I don’t
suppose these NVA bitches have the guts to stand up to their Neanderthal men and
demand to keep their own names.”
“They seem to have stood up to the FBI and FATPO well enough,”
remarked Clancy. “It’s probably part of their political and social program. I would
imagine that under the new order we’re going back to the old ways, as
contradictory as that sounds.” His own wife’s feminist refusal to take his own
family name had always irked Clancy, and he suddenly felt the germ of a suspicion
that life under the Northwest American Republic might have its compensations
after all. Not to mention avoiding the necessity of throwing the family on the
tender mercy of Amber’s ghastly mother, a Washington, D.C., socialite who had
never met a left wing or liberal cause she didn’t like, no matter how far out.
***
The next morning Dr. Clancy Myers got a call from Doug Raeburn, one of
his colleagues in the University of Montana English department. The department
head, Dr. Benjamin Levy, had fled to New York a year before, after the campus
sniffer dogs had discovered a radio-controlled bomb taped to the bottom of his
Lincoln Town Car. Whatever NVA person was watching for him to get in decided
to go ahead and detonate it anyway, to send a message, or possibly just for the
pleasure of blowing up a Jew’s automobile. The bomb hurled shrapnel and a
burning tire through the window of the lecture hall where Dr. Levy was
discoursing on the Class Consciousness of John Milton, based on his own
definitive tome Marx in Paradise. The message was received loud and clear, and
from then on Dr. Levy delivered his class lectures on how Milton was a closet
Commie from Brooklyn, via a large plasma satellite video screen.
“Did you get the e-mail from that General Macready character to the UM
faculty?” Raeburn asked him.
“No,” said Clancy. “Amber spent yesterday wiping the hard drives on all our
computers clean and reformatting them and closing all our e-mail accounts, and so
I haven’t bothered to log on today. She thinks that she can hide her politics from
the Nazis, which I rather doubt, but in a way, I hope she’s right. She’s hysterical,
she’s a bitch, and we probably would have ended up divorced if this catastrophe
hadn’t happened, but I don’t want her dead. Or me.”
“Full meeting at eleven in the faculty lounge,” Raeburn told Clancy. “We
can’t fill up the auditorium any more. Not enough of us left. Odd, how he would
know that. I get the feeling these guys have really done their homework, Somehow
I don’t think Ben Levy will be sitting in on this one by satellite hookup.”
“Why?” asked Clancy. “Are we finally getting a new department head?
Well, I suppose we would, wouldn’t we?”
“Rumor has it we’re getting a Chancellor as well, courtesy of the new
brooms in town,” said Raeburn.
“Boy, they don’t waste any time, do they?” said Myers. “Nazi efficiency,
eh? What happened to Frobisher? Or dare I even ask?”
“Oh, he cleared out with the mayor and his compatriots on the Patriotic
Committee,” said Raeburn. “He didn’t stop running until he got to Minneapolis. I
got a call from him this morning. He sounded drunk.”
“So?”
“Well, drunker than usual. He was sobbing that it was all over. It probably
is, for him,” said Raeburn with a chuckle.
“Oh, I wouldn’t count Lord Frodo out,” said Myers. “He will now spend the
rest of his career sucking off the teat of martyrdom, singing for his supper by retelling over and over again on countless talk shows how he had to flee into the
night from his beloved Big Sky Country with the hellhounds of the SS nipping at
his heels. By the time he gets his book deal, the story will probably end up
resembling the scene out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and our illustrious Chancellor will
be crossing the ice like Eliza, pursued by Simon Legree and a pack of bloodthirsty
dogs. Hell, Doug, we’ve got another Holocaust industry in the making here.”
“As recently as a month ago I would have hung up the phone and erased
your number if you’d said something like that, for fear Homeland Security would
be listening,” said Raeburn with a grim chuckle.
“Well, Doug, I don’t know how long it will be before the Gestapo is
listening instead, but I have to admit, for the moment it’s a good feeling to be able
to have a simple phone conversation without self-censorship,” agreed Clancy. “See
you in a bit.”
Clancy walked into the meeting at 11 a.m. and found about 50 of his
colleagues from all departments gathered in the long, spacious lounge. The
University’s pre-war teaching staff had numbered over 400, including TAs and
grad students. Now all the blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Asians and open homosexuals
were gone, as well as about half of the remaining white faculty whose views and
curricula, like that of the quondam Chancellor Frobisher, were sufficiently left of
center to cause them to depart from the Northwest before the arrival of the NDF.
Myers recognized some of his closest friends like Raeburn, Dr. Peter
Klosterberg of the history department, Dr. Jan Renner from the School of
Engineering, Professor Heidi Winters from his own English department, and the
elderly Dr. Charles Luger, who seemed to be the sole remaining member of the
Political Science department. The lounge didn’t have an actual bar, since that
would have required such formalities as a liquor license. However, a generous
miscellaneous upkeep fund courtesy of the taxpayers provided a long antique
sideboard filled up with rows of bottles, decanters, and glasses, as well as a
discreet refrigerator beside the sideboard full of bottles of imported beer and
chilled steins. Even in a fairly minor grove of academe like the University of
Montana, America’s intellectual élite had always lived well. Myers saw that
virtually every faculty member now had a drink in their hand, in violation of the
genteel “yardarm rule,” which had always prohibited liquor consumption in the
lounge before 5 p.m. He walked over to Luger. “Boozing already, Charles?” he
asked, helping himself to a Scotch. “Even Frodo always confined himself to the
bottle he kept in his desk drawer before five.”
“We have no idea what our new masters intend, Clancy,” replied Luger.
“You realize this thug Macready may have called us all together here so he can
arrest us all in one fell swoop, and save his men the trouble of running us down in
sub-zero snow? This may be the last chance for me to enjoy a large Chivas Regal
with a twist before I face the firing squad, and I intend to take advantage of it.”
“If you’re that worried, why are you staying?” asked Myers.
“I’m sixty-seven years of age, Clancy,” said Luger with a rueful chuckle.
“I’m far too old to pack my grip and start over in some eastern school, where my
learning and my experience, not to mention my race and gender, are now
considered obsolete. I hold five university degrees, two of them doctorates. I have
been teaching the art and science of politics and statecraft for the past forty years to
blockheads, some of whom were barely able to read and understand the TV guide,
never mind the Federalist Papers. I admit I used to subscribe to Francis
Fukuyama’s theory about the end of history. I assumed that Western man was
pretty much stuck with liberal democracy for the duration, a form of government
by and for extremely wealthy men and global corporations, controlled and guided
by an obscure tribe of Hamitic Semites who managed to survive into the twentyfirst century with a Bronze Age religion and the cultural ethic of a school of sharks
intact. Yet this bizarre Party that started with one middle-aged eccentric sitting in a
flophouse and pounding on a computer keyboard, has now invalidated everything I
thought I knew and everything I’ve been teaching, through the simple expedient of
pulling a few triggers and planting a few bombs. It appears that Jefferson,
Rousseau, and Locke got it all wrong and Chairman Mao got it right: power comes
out of the barrel of a gun, and that still holds true even for us pale over-civilized
types, no matter what we thought. I confess that now that these bomb-throwing,
race-baiting maniacs have captured the machinery of state power, I will be
fascinated to see what they do with it. Unless, like the Khmer Rouge, they decide
to slaughter everyone who wears spectacles for being intelligentsia.”
They were overheard by Doctor Linda Barnard from the School of Media
and Journalism. She was a small, forty-something woman with mousy hair, whose
freckles gave her an incongruous appearance of youth. They now stood out like ink
spots on her ashen face, and the drink in her hand was shaking with fear. “How can
you be so blasé, Charles?” she whispered vehemently. “It’s already started! Lou
Coppetta is missing! I went over to his house this morning and I found the door
smashed in, and no sign of Lou or Sherry!”
“Probably that Force 101 thing,” said Myers glumly. “What the hell did he
stay for? His doctoral thesis was on the legal validity of Native American land
claims to most of the state, he was the University chair for the Montana Human
Rights Commission, he helped draft Montana’s hatecrime law, and he was a
lawyer, for God’s sake! Did he think he wasn’t on somebody’s list? You know, I
think this whole thing happened because we simply never could bring ourselves to
accept that these are not stupid, ignorant rednecks bashing minorities, and that
from the very beginning we were facing a serious and politically focused armed
insurrection against the United States.”
“Stupid, ignorant rednecks are supposed to be incapable of serious political
thought,” Luger reminded them. “That was always the Party line, remember? No
pun intended. And what about you, Linda? Given your predilection for sleeping
with your female undergraduates in return for good grades and job
recommendations, I must confess that I’m rather surprised to see you here.”
“My mother is in the nursing home,” said Linda miserably. “I can’t leave
her, and I couldn’t take her with me. She doesn’t know what’s been going on. She
barely even knows who I am any more, and she’d be terrified if I tried to drive her
across country into unfamiliar surroundings. All I can do is hang on here, keep my
head down, and hope that somehow I can slip through the cracks.”
“Let’s hope nobody on campus dislikes you enough to rat you out as a
lesbian,” said Myers sympathetically. “The University and the FBI aren’t the only
ones who know how to recruit a network of informers.” Linda trembled from head
to toe and knocked back her drink, which Clancy observed consisted of vodka,
neat.
The door opened and a tall, handsome NDF officer walked in, wearing his
Class A uniform, complete with Sam Browne belt and high boots. He was alone,
which surprised the assembled academics who had expected a squad of goons in
camouflage with machine guns. “Morning, everybody!” he called out cheerfully.
“Hey, Doctor Myers, Doctor Luger, remember me?”
“Young Stockdale, isn’t it?” asked Luger, raising his specs to peer through
them. “You look like someone who should be behind a glass frame from a hundred
years ago, on some octogenarian lady’s mantelpiece in England, in a house full of
cats. Yes, I remember you from several of my classes. You were rather outspoken.
I was supposed to report the kind of thing you were saying in class to Homeland
Security, but being one of those old fossils with ideas about freedom of speech, I
never had the heart to do so. It would seem that I should have.”
“Yes, sir, I remember,” said Jason, walking up to them at the sidebar. Linda
Barnard backed away and tried to fade into the wallpaper. “I always appreciated
the fact that you didn’t.” He held out his hand and shook with Luger, then with a
bemused Myers. “I had several classes with you as well, Dr. Myers. And I
remember that you and your family were friends with Jenny Campbell.”
“Actually, I gather from the news broadcasts that she’s Jenny Stockdale
now,” said Myers. “I suppose congratulations are in order. Church wedding with
all the trimmings, was it?” The whole thing was surreal to him, like some Mad
Hatter’s tea party.
“Thank you, sir,” said Stockdale. “We were married a few weeks ago, after
we finished up in Portland, and no, it was pretty informal.”
“Well, hail, the conquering hero comes,” remarked Luger. “You’ve even got
proper jackboots now.”
“Why not?” asked Jason, lifting one leg to show them off. “They’re
practical, comfortable, and elegant footwear, good for walking around in the snow
as well as for stomping Jews with.”
Luger sighed, and said “And to think, young man, if you had walked into
this room a year ago, I could have tripled my retirement fund with one phone call.”
Jason smiled at them sunnily. “If I had walked into this room a year ago,
Doctor Luger, when I walked out again, you wouldn’t have been making any
calls.”
“God, I suppose that’s true, isn’t it?” sighed Luger, with a rueful smile. “My,
my, the turn-ups one has out here in the real world. Probably one of the reasons
I’ve always chosen to hide behind the ivy-covered walls all my life. The real world
can be so unsettling. In any case, what now? Are you here to arrest us and ship us
all off to a concentration camp?”
“I’m here to introduce the next Chancellor of the University of Montana,”
Stockdale told them.
“And who might that be?” asked Clancy Myers curiously.
“Yes, do tell,” asked Luger with a gleam in his eye. “I’ve often wondered if
any of our colleagues here has been secretly polishing the apple with Jerry Reb
behind our backs, by way of an insurance policy. Giving you gentry information on
the campus and faculty behind our backs, that kind of thing? Like where Ben Levy
parked his car?”
“Actually, yes, the NVA had several Third Section ops on campus almost
since the beginning,” Stockdale told them. “I was one myself for a while back in
the first days of the revolt, and later on so was Jenny, so we both have fond
memories of our college days. But no faculty.”
“So which one of our esteemed colleagues gets the brass ring?” asked Luger,
gesturing with his drink out into the room where everyone else was staring at them
and their conversation was perfectly audible. “Who will be our new Chancellor?”
“I will,” said Jason. “One of the advantages of being part of a victorious
revolution is that once the dust settles, you pretty much have your pick of any job
you want. I asked for this one, and in view of my services rendered, I got it.”
“And what job does Jenny want? Governor?” asked Clancy Myers.
“No, there won’t be any more governors,” Jason told them. “Jenny has made
a choice that Amurrica denied to her and to all young white women for two
generations, a choice that had she had been allowed to make under Zionist rule,
might have kept her out of the NVA.”
“And what is this forbidden career path?” asked Luger.
“She is going to live in a home that I provide for her, and she is going to be a
mother to a new generation of white children,” said Stockdale. “The Jews literally
stole the babies from our people’s cradles, through abortion and feminism and a
capitalist economy that forced women to work all their lives just to survive
alongside men. We are going to fill those cradles up again. Now, I suppose I need
to get the meeting going officially.”
“One more question, Jason, a rather urgent one,” said Myers. “One of our
colleagues is missing. Do you know anything about the whereabouts of Doctor
Louis Coppetta and his wife?”
“Doctor Coppetta is no longer on the university faculty. I think you know
why as well as I do. That’s all I can tell you,” Jason told them, with a little smile
that froze both men’s blood and suddenly brought home to them exactly what was
happening in the real world Dr. Luger had always striven to avoid. They suddenly
understood that their former student, whom both men had genuinely liked and
respected, now had the power to decide if they lived or died.
“Can we see him or his wife, and speak to them?” asked Clancy Myers
daringly.
“They’re both unavailable,” replied Jason, his smile unchanged.
Charles Luger spoke. “I see. Jason, do you remember enough of my course
to recall the section on the ancient Roman constitution? How in eighty-one B.C.
the Senate formally requested of the dictator Sulla that if he was going to proscribe
Roman citizens, could he at least have the courtesy to post a list in the Forum of
the men who were to be hunted down and killed? May I ask if such a list exists in
our case, and if so, where it can be found? Somewhere on the internet, no doubt?”
“Don’t worry, Doctor Luger, you’re not on it.” Jason assured him genially.
“If you were, you wouldn’t be here. Besides, you’re one of us.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Luger, flummoxed. “How on earth do you make
that out, young man?”
“You just said that Sulla began his dictatorship in eighty-one B.C. You see, I
do remember your course. I remember that then you used the politically correct
eighty-one B.C.E., Before Common Era, as you were required to by the curriculum
and which you would have been disciplined for by the Board of Regents if you
hadn’t. Just now, absent the threat of being ratted out and hauled in front of a leftylib kangaroo court that could ruin your career, you said B.C.—Before Christ. Your
mind never was fully under control, was it, Doctor Luger?”
“No,” admitted Luger. “No, it wasn’t, and you’re right. A year ago, I would
never have made a slip like that. It could have lost me everything.”
“And you don’t have anything to worry about either, Doctor Myers,” said
Jason, turning to Clancy and shaking his hand again. “I never got a chance to thank
you for what you did for Jenny after that disaster up in Helena, but you can be sure
that neither she nor I have forgotten it. The NVA pays its debts. Now, if you’ll take
a seat, we can get started.”
Later that night at the dinner table, the renewed presence of 14-year-old
Bobby Campbell reminded Clancy of Jason Stockdale’s odd remark. Kevin had
invited Bobby over, “now that everything’s okay” as he put it, and Amber had
been sensible enough not to antagonize the new régime by banning the brother of
Montana’s most photogenic new newscaster from her home. Clancy Myers
mentioned what had happened just before the official meeting had begun. “I have
no idea on earth what the man is talking about!” he complained. Then he noticed
Georgia giggling and the two older boys smirking at him. “Wait a minute, do you
kids know something about this?”
“Kind of,” admitted Kevin.
“Jenny was in the garage!” chirped Georgia with a giant grin, finally able to
tell the Great Secret.
“What?” said Amber, nonplussed.
“Remember that day those FBI guys came here talking all the crap about
Jenny and showing you pictures of her boyfriend Jason?” asked Kevin. “She was
in the garage the whole time. With a gun.”
“Two guns! An Uzi and a nine-millimeter Glock!” said Bobby.
“I hid her!” announced Georgia, beaming. “It was a secret!”
“Yeah, Peanut, you hid her all right, but me and Kevin brought her here,”
said Bobby.
“I hate to admit it, honey, but our kids may have saved our lives,” Clancy
said to his wife. Amber Myers screamed out loud and fled from the table.
III. – Don’t Tread On Me
(Four months after Longview)
“Let them fear, so long as they obey.” – Tiberius, Roman emperor
The NAR’s Council of Ministers, which was now the formal name of the
cabinet, convened in the old governor’s conference room in Olympia with the
plush red leather chairs on a cold day in late February. There had already been
some re-shuffling since the creation of the body back in November. Henry “Red”
Morehouse had taken over as permanent Speaker of the Constitutional Convention,
whose deliberations were projected to last well into the summer, thus leaving
Frank Barrow to deal exclusively with security issues. Dr. Paul Hassling, a
physicist with a degree from M.I.T. and a former NVA bombmaker, had joined the
cabinet as Energy Minister after it had become apparent that energy was a separate
problem of some magnitude, and that Commerce and Industry was too stretched
already to cover it.
Since the arrival of the interim State President from his wartime internment,
the office of Chairman of the Council of State had been abolished, and Morehouse
had been sworn in as interim Vice President of the Republic. Being a former
schoolteacher, he had also taken on the Education portfolio from General Dan
Macready, who was still in Missoula as NDF commander for the eastern border,
and who had evinced no interest at all in the post to begin with. “How did my
name ever get put into that particular hat anyway, Red?” he had asked Morehouse
on the phone.
“Somebody thought we had too many coasties in the Council, and figured
we needed somebody in a cowboy hat,” Morehouse responded.
“Beautiful!” said Macready in disgust. “We win our freedom, and the first
thing we do is set up affirmative action quotas!”
By common consent, Morehouse continued to act as the chair for Council
meetings. Today there was a full quorum, including Andrei Stavrovitch Stepanov,
who had become Minister for Culture by virtue of his being a classical music
aficionado, and Donald “Farmer” Brown, the Minister of Food and Agriculture,
who had once been an actual farmer. The American news media and liberal cable
TV pundits sneered at the Northwest ministers for their lack of apparent
qualifications, to which Red Morehouse had replied in an interview with the BBC,
“Yes, I admit, it’s an unusual concept. We believe that the people responsible for
government policy and implementation in a given area need to have some actual
experience in that field. Liberal democracy’s long-standing practice of appointing
cabinet ministers on the basis of gender, skin color, and campaign contributions is
obviously much superior.”
Now Morehouse spoke up. “Right, comrades, our special teleconference call
that I memoed all of you about is scheduled for an hour from now. We need to get
through as much as we can before then. To begin with, we need to hear situation
reports since Friday. First things first. John, how are we militarily?”
“The Northwest Defense Force now numbers approximately four hundred
thousand people in all branches,” said Morgan, consulting some papers he had
brought in a file folder. “A far cry from as recently as two years ago, when the
NVA consisted of about eight thousand Volunteers. Almost all of the four hundred
thousand are army, of course. The Luftwaffe now has around thirteen thousand
personnel and over a thousand aircraft we’ve commandeered, almost all civilian
prop jobs, but we’ve also got a few private jets and airliners we’re converting into
fighter-bombers or transports, as well as over a hundred helicopters. We haven’t
even test-flown half of our aircraft yet. I’m hoping to have the whole Luftwaffe in
full and correct uniform by the first week in March. Performance-wise, as you
know, they did a slap-up job during the battle of Portland and also during the
Consolidation, flying intelligence and observation runs, and some bombing
missions against loyalist paramilitaries and general Amurrican knuckleheads
within the Republic.”
“Point of order. Is that what we’re calling our current period of time now?”
asked Bart DeMarco from the Transport Ministry. “I thought this was the
Cleanup?”
“That term is unofficial,” said Morehouse primly. “Consolidation sounds
more dignified. But yes, I’m sure it will be remembered by the people of this
country as the Cleanup. Please continue, General Morgan.”
“Getting back to the Luftwaffe, their morale is high and they’re doing
wonders with what we’ve been able to get for them to work with so far, but I don’t
have to tell you that any serious opposition to an American air strike is out of the
question, and will be for some time. You can’t bring down B-52s, Stealth bombers,
Cruise missiles and F-35s with Cessnas, crop dusters, and weather channel copters.
One of our top defense priorities has to be establishing some kind of air cover for
our country.”
“There is no way we can win an arms race with the Americans financially, in
the air or in space,” warned Ray Ridgeway. “We simply don’t have the money. We
will never be able to throw money away on bottomless defense contracting like the
Americans do, spending millions and millions of credits to develop some fighterbomber or missile system that will be obsolete in two years at best. We’re going to
have to rely on technological innovation, and not just in the military, but
throughout every aspect of life and the economy in the Republic. Quality, not
quantity. Brain, not brawn.”
“Fortunately Aryan man has always been long on brains,” Morehouse
replied. “The Kriegsmarine?”
“About eight thousand hands so far,” Morgan told them. “We have even less
for them to sail than we have planes for the flyboys to fly. I had a long meeting
with Admiral Hacker this morning, and he has developed a short-term plan for
slapping together a navy for us. Sort of a navy, anyway. Again, all our craft are
commandeered from abandoned enemy property, Jews’ yachts and drug dealers’
speedboats and such, or other vessels that were simply abandoned when their
owners fled the country. Hacker is concentrating on light stuff, anything we can
convert into torpedo patrol boats, missile assault vessels and gunboats. These will
at least get our naval ensign out on the ocean where it can be seen from the shore,
although once again, resisting any full-scale naval attack from the Americans isn’t
in the cards right now.”
“We won’t have a proper blue water fleet for many years,” said Bresler,
shaking his head sadly.
“Afraid not,” concurred Morgan. “Just coastal defense, and not too much of
that at first. The KM is diddling around with some crude torpedoes and missiles
that might be able to sink an enemy vessel if we can get close enough, and if they
work, but we don’t have the manufacturing capacity to produce anything in serious
quantity. Right now, we’re about like the Confederate navy trying to make
submarines out of old boilers and mines out of beer barrels. Actually, we do have a
couple of small submarines, for what they’re worth. One we appropriated from the
Oceanographic Research Unit of the University of Oregon, and another one we
confiscated from Microsoft.”
“What the hell was Microsoft Corporation doing with a submarine?” asked
Frank Barrow in surprise.
“Apparently, Bill Gates bought it as a toy many years ago,” replied Morgan.
“When Gates OD’ed in the crapper, nobody knew what to do with it, and it got lost
in the shuffle. We found it sitting in a dry dock shed on Lake Union. I don’t see
any real use for them. We don’t even have anybody who knows how to sail them,
although Hacker put two-man crews on each and told them to figure it out.”
“Let’s hope they don’t end up drowning themselves like the first crew of the
Hunley,” said Morehouse. “I talked with Hacker myself down in the Convention
bar the other day, and I agree with his plan. The Republic doesn’t need a blue
water fleet anyway at this juncture, just coastal defense to keep anybody from
sailing right on in and landing whatever the hell they want on our coastline. How
are you coming on Kriegsmarine uniforms?”
“When the Americans ran from the Puget Sound naval base in Everett, they
left behind a whole warehouse full of sailors’ blues,” said Morgan. “We stamped
the eagle over the right pocket and onto the caps, and there ya go. Class A and
dress uniform issue to all ranks should be complete by the end of March.”
“How about the land forces?” asked Barrow.
“Every Northwest soldier is now in uniform, although a few are still short
some items on their dress kit, buttons and belt buckles and such. Small arms we’re
up to requirements on; about half the line units are toting M-16s and the other half
are packing Kalashnikovs Our Russian friends have been very generous with
accessories and ammo.”
“They want the full NDF contract,” commented Barrow.
“They do indeed, but as grateful as we are to Big Bear, the Republic has to
make our own weapons just like everything else, and as soon as possible,” said
Morehouse. “We can’t be dependent on foreign sources for our armaments. We’ve
taken over the Olympic Arms factory down the road here, and we will be
producing our own small arms and ammo very soon. The larger ordnance is
another problem. How are we doing on heavy weapons, General Morgan?”
“We’ve managed to acquire over a hundred modern artillery fieldpieces and
fifty-six tanks, ranging from modern American vehicles like the Abrams Mark IV
to an old Sherman we dragged out of a museum and re-activated,” said Morgan.
“Shells are a problem. I heard what you just said, Red, but we need to acquire
overseas suppliers for all our heavy ordnance until such time as we can tool up our
own arms industry. We now have over a hundred Strykers, and we’re converting
the old Kenworth truck plant in Tukwila to manufacture our own armored car
modeled on the old British Saracen, more as an exercise in getting skilled people
employed once again than anything else. I hate to be a prophet of doom, but we all
have to realize that fighting the Americans as a guerrilla force back during the
revolt was one thing. Then they couldn’t find us, and we had no turf to defend.
Now we do. As brave and proud as these NDF kids are, we can’t stand up to the
Americans in a head-on battle, and we won’t be able to for years. We beat Partman
because those assholes in Washington were running around like chickens with their
heads cut off and they never backed him up, for which we can thank God. If the
kikes had pulled themselves together in time when Partman did his little mutiny
thang, they could have held on to Portland like the Allies held West Berlin, for as
long as they wanted. We won that battle through on pure audacity, but that won’t
always serve.”
“You have a General Staff now, don’t you, John?” asked Morehouse.
“More or less,” confirmed Morgan.
“Okay, major permanent assignment: you and the best military minds we
have need to put together a strategic plan for resisting an enemy invasion, most
likely from the United States, but work on variations from Canada and this new
Aztlan entity that it looks like will be set up in the Southwest, as well as all
conceivable combinations thereof. Keep it updated all the time; it needs to be
reviewed on the basis of every item of fresh intelligence we can get hold of at least
once a month.”
“Already on it,” said Morgan. “We call it Plan One.”
“Art, what’s the status on the Civil Guard?” asked Barrow.
“Pretty much one hundred percent up and running, and in uniform,” replied
Justice Minister Arthur Flowers proudly. “All patrol cars and other Guard vehicles
are now correctly painted and detailed, and the blue and red American siren lights
have all been replaced with blue and green. There are now thirty-three thousand
Guardsmen and -women, give or take, in over three hundred stations across the
Republic. Mostly concentrated in the large urban areas, of course. About seventy
percent of them are former American law enforcement officers who stayed on, and
the rest have been drafted in from the NVA and NDF. We’re making sure that
almost all the senior personnel are Jerry Rebs, for obvious reasons.”
“Are the two elements meshing okay?” Barrow wanted to know. “I can
imagine how hard it must be to go in to work every day with people who were
trying to kill you this time a year ago.”
“It’s a little tense in places, especially in the cities like Seattle and Portland
and Spokane, where there was a lot of bloodshed on both sides during the war,”
Flowers told them. “But a lot of the old cops were always quietly sympathetic to
begin with, and the rest who have stayed on are professionals. I see signs that
things are getting ironed out. The real PC assholes and truly Unionist cops were all
killed during the war, or else they got the hell out after Longview. The ones who
can’t forget the war, and who can’t work for the new government on grounds of
conscience, have mostly been honest about the fact and resigned. The ones who
have stayed on are mostly the better elements, the real cops who are all about the
job itself, and they really, really appreciate our getting rid of the shitskinned
minorities who caused ninety percent of the crime and the trouble under ZOG. For
the first time in their careers, they’re actually seeing crime get better and not
constantly worse. There have been some personnel incidents in station houses, but
we’ve handled them, almost always through transfer, and not always the ex-Union
cops, either. Some of our guys still have some pretty big chips on their shoulders
left over from the war as well,” admitted Flowers. “It’s not cool to walk into the
break room on your first day on the job, and find some goon sitting there scarfing
down donuts who beat the crap out of you with a phone book in high school for
saying nigger.”
“Those chips on men’s shoulders are going to be there for years. We’ll all
have to learn to work around them,” said Morehouse.
“How do the men feel about being disarmed on the street level?” asked Gary
Bresler from Commerce and Industry.
“It’s not absolutely certain yet that we’re going to do that,” Flowers
reminded him. “The Convention hasn’t ruled on it. But it’s a fascinating concept—
an unarmed police force for an armed society, where a cop has to command respect
for the man he is and not just for his badge and his gun. A surprising number of
Guardsmen are in favor of it.”
“Walter, how go our foreign affairs?” said Morehouse, turning to the former
American Secretary of State. “Or do we have any yet?”
“Not many. So far the only foreign country that has granted us full
recognition, complete with exchange of ambassadors, is Russia, but that’s probably
the best one to have right now,” reported Stanhope. “Not just for what they can do
for us, but because other developed nations figure if Big Bear is in here foraging
for goodies, then they’d better be here, too. A lot of other countries are going to get
nervous at the prospect of the Russians getting a monopoly on our timber and pulp,
our minerals, our future grain production, our produce, and our markets. The
Northwest Republic is going to be a food-producing nation with a hard-working
white population, and those are getting fewer and more far between as world
capitalism continues its decline. We are probably going to find ourselves in the
same ironic position that Rhodesia and South Africa once faced, in that we will be
feeding the very people who are trying to destroy us.”
Stanhope went on: “The wealthy businessmen and multinational
corporations who really run the world are not stupid, comrades, and they
understand that once we get our act together, the Republic is going to be a major
world power. We will come through with an efficient and productive economy, a
well educated and racially homogenous population, a young population, and we
will have the ability to make and to implement decisions free of the kind of
strangling government red tape that afflicts everywhere else in the Western liberal
and social democracies. Other countries won’t be able to admit the fact in public
for fear of the Jews and liberals, but they will all want a piece of our pie, if only to
prevent Big Bear from getting all of it. As per usual, the European Union wants to
have its cake and eat it too. While their politicians are screaming hatred at us from
every podium, all kinds of corporate and big business movers and shakers from
Europe are easing their bods over here on scouting trips, pretending to represent
private corporate interests, or come here for the skiing in Sandpoint, or whatever.
Then when they get back, they’re reporting to their respective governments, and
the EU in Brussels itself as to whether or not they think we’re going to make it.
Once they’re convinced the Republic will be around for a while, they’ll want to do
business, especially since the Third World markets they’ve relied on for a
generation have now collapsed completely or else been taken over by the Chinese.”
“And how do the ching-ling-dings feel about us?” asked Morgan.
“The Russians got here first, they don’t like the Russians, and in any case we
can’t have anything to do with them for racial reasons,” said Stanhope. “Russia
now has a foothold in North America, as they view it, so the Chinese will back
Aztlan so they can get one, too. Actually, they were playing the beaner card long
before we came along. Where do you think most of the funding for Frente de la
Raza has been coming from for at least the last ten years? My guess is that we will
end up with a hostile Aztlan on our southern border which is not only mestizo, but
a Chinese client state.”
“Canada?” asked Morehouse.
“Always the most Judaized of all the Western democracies,” said Stanhope.
“Even more so than the United States, if you can imagine that. The Canadian
government has always been virtually a colony of Tel Aviv. They regard us with
horror and loathing, but so far as we know, no one in Ottawa is nuts enough to try
physical force. Our army is already a lot larger than theirs. We bloodied them
badly in British Columbia and Alberta during the war, and they know full well that
all the NVA cells didn’t move south after Longview. For all their swaggering and
their mouth, Ottawa doesn’t want the guerrilla war starting up again.”
“A lot of Canucks want to do just that, including my own wife,” said
Barrow. “Jane hides it well, but she’s damned bitter about the way we sold out the
Canadian West at Longview, and she has every right to be. If the NVA ever starts
rolling again through the Great White North, she’s made it clear that she’s going
back, and as terrible as that would be for me, I wouldn’t have the right to stop her.
We betrayed our Canadian comrades at Longview, and it still tastes bad in my
mouth.”
“What the hell could we do, Frank?” asked Stanhope sympathetically. “You
remember how it was, and I saw it from the American side. The Canadian
government simply wouldn’t talk to us. They wouldn’t even send an observer.
They hung tough and laid all the weight for the loss of the Northwest on Chelsea
Clinton’s shoulders, and they reaped their reward. That’s why the Canadian regime
is now the absolute darling of world Jewry. The kikes can’t do enough for those
thieves and bugger boys in Ottawa these days. You got all you could get at
Longview, Frank, you got the Republic. I think Jane understands that. Right now
the Canadian government officially pretends that we don’t exist, and we think that
solipsistic approach will continue for a while, at least until they get their orders
from Israel.”
“But will Israel itself last much longer?” asked DeMarco.
“Intelligence reports tell us that the Muslim nations are beginning to muster
their forces for the final effort to drive the American occupation troops from their
lands, and overrun Israel while they’re at it,” said Stanhope. “They may well be
successful, but whether they are or not, it’s going to be a bloodbath, and in very
short order the United States will have far more on their plates than us alone.
That’s why we—they, I should say—that was the reason that the U.S.A. agreed to
Longview at all, knowing even as they went in that the result wasn’t going to be an
optimal one from their point of view. But you and the Political Bureau were right
on that one, Red. The most we on the American side came to Longview hoping to
get was a white Puerto Rico and no nationalizing of American corporate assets.”
“That’s the biggie,” said Morehouse. “How fare our former lords and
masters in La Cesspool Grande?”
“Right now everybody is screaming for Chelsea’s head, of course. The
liberal wing of the Democratic Party and the neocon wing of the Republicans cosponsored the impeachment resolution. Everyone figured that the Sea Hag would
simply get them all to back off, since the Treaty was signed on her orders and not
Chelsea’s. For a time last month it looked like Hillary had decided the heat was too
great and she’d made a mistake, and she was trying to walk it back and maybe
even resume the war on some pretext, but in view of the, uh, incident in Denver,
Hillary is now removed from the scene.” He looked at Barrow suggestively.
“That wasn’t meant to be so messy,” said Barrow. “We sent in two of
Charlie Randall’s best operatives, both foreigners to try and divert suspicion. They
were posing as a waiter and a bellhop in the Denver Hilton. One of them was a
Serb and one of them was a white African. It turns out that both of them had issues
with Hillary due to what was done to their own homelands in the past, and when
they extracted her from the conference and got her alone up in the bridal suite, it
got personal. We’re pushing a disinformation program to blame the episode on
disaffected elements in the United States establishment. It may have some effect
over time, but right now, nobody’s buying it. That slaughterhouse in the hotel
room had NVA written all over it. Everybody assumes we somehow got O.C.
Oglevy into the hotel undercover.”
“I’m surprised the Americans haven’t called for a full-scale war over it,”
said James Salvatore from Interior, shaking his head.
“Hillary Clinton had so many enemies in the American establishment by
now that most of Capitol Hill and Wall Street were clinking champagne glasses
together when they heard the news,” said Stanhope. “Discreetly, of course. I’ve
already had contacts from former associates of mine in Washington offering
money, information and cooperation to the Republic out of pure gratitude, as well
as veiled suggestions as to who should be next on our hit list. That’s an interesting
possibility for us. If there are elements in Western governments willing to
exchange favors for removing their internal political and commercial enemies, we
might be able to develop a lucrative little cottage industry as hitmen.”
“Hey, it’s what we do,” said Barrow with a shrug.
“Will Chelsea be able to make it past impeachment without Mommy
Dearest?” asked Morehouse.
“She now has a tremendous sympathy vote going for her, of course, over the
tragic loss of her sainted mither,” said Stanhope. “Old man Bill’s brain burned out
long ago from the coke and the booze and the syphilis, and all he does is wander
the White House corridors in an old bathrobe with a Secret Service man in tow,
exposing himself every now and then to the secretaries and the female staff. But if
Chelsea cleans him up nice and rolls him out in a wheelchair before Congress, she
can maybe rally enough sympathy and nostalgia for the Auld Lang Syne of the
Nineties to beat the impeachment. She’ll be a lame duck for the rest of her term,
but a lame duck is what we want.”
“We’re having WPB work up some plans to take out the major driving
people behind impeachment if it looks like it might succeed,” said Barrow.
“What’s WPB?” asked Dr. Paul Hassling.
“The latest in our own alphabet soup. Used to be Third Section,” explained
Barrow. “The old NVA Threesec has now split into two sections. There’s BOSS,
the Bureau of State Security, which is responsible for counter-intelligence and
internal security within the Republic. That’s Dangerous Dan’s outfit, or the
McGrew Crew as they call themselves. Then there’s Charlie Randall’s WPB, the
War Prevention Bureau, which is responsible for foreign operations and
intelligence. Both report to me and through me to the State President, with
oversight from the parliamentary security committee.”
“So it’s going to be Parliament for sure and not the National Convention?”
asked Fiona Bonnar.
“Looks that way, yes,” replied Barrow.
“Frank, how is Force 101 doing?” asked Morehouse.
Barrow consulted his own notes. “We’ve made an estimated forty thousand
apprehensions and terminations so far, the overwhelming majority of them in the
top six urban areas of the Republic,” he told them. “About a thousand of the more
egregious and publicly notorious cases have been tried before court-martials. The
prisoners were condemned and hanged within twenty-four hours. Most of them,
anyway. For public relations purposes, we made sure there have been some
acquittals as well, over a hundred so far, all sad sacks or people who genuinely got
caught up in an impossible situation. The prisoners who have been openly hanged
are mostly well-known informers from the War of Independence, and white people
of both genders who are widely known to have committed public bestiality and
perversion in the past. Their misbehavior was public, to the point where their
punishment needs to be public as well.”
“White women sleeping with niggers?” asked Fiona Bonnar with distaste in
her voice.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry to say so,” said Barrow. “Public reaction has been
uniformly favorable, and not just because all the liberals have run away. Back in
the old days, every decent person who saw some monkoid walking down the street
with his arm around a white girl always got a sick feeling somewhere inside. There
have been cases where some of these wretched women were turned over to the
tribunals by their own relatives.”
“How public?” asked Bresler. “I don’t recall seeing any televised hangings
on the news. I think I’d remember.”
Barrow shook his head. “Again for public relations purposes, the executions
are carried out in private without television cameras. Everyone already knows we
kill people, and we don’t want to provide enemy propaganda with multiple images
of dangling bodies that they can use against us in their own anti-NAR propaganda.
The Iranians did that, and it gave a field day to their external enemies. Those trials
are a matter of public record. The rest of the proscribed individuals who have been
apprehended have been hanged in private and without publicity. As per the
protocols we established, no written records on the vaporizations are being kept.
We have apprehended virtually none of the big fish on our lists, and now that the
word is getting out, we’re finding fewer and fewer of the smaller ones. Like the
Jews did in World War Two when they heard the Germans were coming, the Jews
of today and their liberal friends have hooked up and booked when the reckoning
came due. The ones we are capturing and disposing of are mostly a bunch of
hapless race-mixers, sexual deviates, drug addicts and petty informers, none of
whom seem to have had the sense to realize who they’re dealing with. Sometimes
the price of stupidity is extinction, as our own race almost found out the hard way.”
“How are the men in Force 101 holding up?” asked Stanhope.
“Leach says no problem. We found that once we actually started fighting
instead of tapping on computer keyboards, we’ve always had those who are willing
to go the extra mile for us in such matters, mostly men whose wives or daughters
fell into the hands of monkoids or muds, or who served time in the Zionist prisons
for the hatecrime of saying a forbidden word or upsetting some politically
protected minority. There are some Mandingo women on the force as well,
although I have to admit, I still have qualms about that. As hardened as most of
them are from the war and their own private demons, sometimes a man simply
can’t handle seeing one more hysterical, weeping girl with a rope around her neck.
When that happens, he goes to his CO and says he wants out, and he is reassigned
immediately. No questions asked, no remarks passed, nothing negative on his
record. Very few Force 101 guys have taken advantage of that policy. Once the
force is disbanded, everybody swears on the Official Secrets Act, they move on
with their lives, and it’s never to be spoken of again.”
“Body disposal?” asked Morehouse.
“Force 101 has commandeered about a dozen large and isolated hog farms
around the country and staffed them with special complements, all male. What the
swine don’t dispose of is gathered up and processed into fertilizer, bagged, and
turned over to the Ministry of Agriculture. These idiots wanted to stay here in this
land despite what they’ve done, so we give them their wish. We return them to the
earth from which they sprang.”
“What of administrative follow-up?” asked Andrei Stepanov, his English
still somewhat Russian-accented even after all his years spent living in the Pacific
Northwest.
“The Bureau of State Security is now employing over a thousand clerks and
computer personnel to track down and identify, and where possible to eliminate all
record of these unpersons,” said Barrow. “This will be an ongoing project for many
years, but eventually we hope we will be able effectively to remove all trace of
them and their vileness from the official record, and leave that much less for future
enemy propagandists to go on. Our computer geeks are going after any server
outside the country that needs to be targeted for this purpose. To save time and also
just for the hell of it, they’re not messing around with viruses. Mostly they’re reformatting the servers at long range, and wiping the whole thing clean, which has
the added benefit of fucking up the American infrastructure even more than it is
already.”
“Good,” said Morehouse with an approving nod. “We need to keep them off
balance and dithering, so they can’t get organized and work out a cohesive
response to The Cataclysm, as the liberals are calling it on their blogs nowadays.”
“A lot of those blogs are disappearing as well,” Barrow told them. “Purging
written records, newspaper archives, and other hard copy stuff is a lot more
difficult. It will be a very long term project indeed, especially outside the country.
It has to be done, though. These people were and are human garbage, they deserve
only oblivion, and as far as we can prevent it, nobody is going to come along later
and make heroes out of them. If we get this part right, there will be no one coming
up with some Northwest version of The Diary of Anne Frank.”
“God, I hope not,” said Morehouse with a sigh. “Ray, how’s the Republic’s
bank balance doing?”
“We have over twenty-four billion dollars in cash assets under state control,
and there’s at least twice that much in private hands throughout the Republic,” said
Ridgeway. “Plus the value of the real estate confiscated from the enemy and from
Runaways, which is almost beyond computing. That sounds like a lot of money,
but when you’re trying to run a modern state, it’s amazing how quickly you burn
up the cash. As I said at the beginning, we have come into a huge inheritance, but
we have to be thrifty and conserve it, since it may be some time before we can
work out a revenue system.”
“What developments on that front?” asked Bresler from Commerce and
Industry. “A lot of business people in the Northwest want to know what kind of
taxes they’re going to be expected to pay, and they’re asking me.”
“The Northwest Constitution forbids both income tax and taxing
homesteads,” said Ridgeway. “The debate on taxing commercial property is still
raging in the Convention. On the one side, some say that it’s a form of feudalism
and it means that no one ever actually owns any real property if they have to pay
an annual tribute to the state for it. On the other hand, the more pragmatic say we
have to raise money somehow and we have to tax something. A definite small
business lobby is developing in the Convention, which I suppose is understandable
considering the way small businesses were treated under the United States. We’ve
reached agreement on things like the Republic’s right to charge customs and excise
duties on imported products, especially luxury goods, but as to business and
business property taxes, it’s still up in the air. How’s the Great Weed Debate going
out there of late, Red?”
“About two-thirds pragmatists who say grow it, sell it, and tax it like booze,
and one-third BCs who rant and rave about hippy-dippy whigger degenerates
smokin’ dat mary-jah-wanna and coming after their demure daughters with lust in
their drug-crazed eyes,” replied Morehouse wearily. “I think it will pass. Hell, I
shouldn’t complain. It keeps them off religion.”
“Red, the Treasury can sure as hell use that revenue stream,” said Ridgeway.
“Not to mention the export possibilities.”
“Then the rest of the world will call us a nation of drug dealers,” pointed out
Jim Salvatore.
“They’re going to call us all kinds of things anyway,” said Ridgeway. “It’s
not as if anything we do will ever win the world’s approval, so we might as well do
what’s in our own best interests, and the rest of the world can go commit an
unnatural act on themselves.”
“What are BCs?” asked Fiona Bonnar.
“A slang term that’s come up of late,” explained Morehouse. “It means
Beaver Cleavers, or possibly Buzz Cuts, from the old American military hairdo
that used to be taken as a kind of statement of conservatism. There’s a significant
minority among us who, in defiance of all logic and reality, still believe even after
all that has happened, that somehow it’s possible to turn back the clock and return
to the 1950s.”
“Now we have state power, something of kind might be done, Comrade Vice
President,” said Andrei Stepanov. “Not time machine, to be sure, but better aspects
of past eras can be resurrected, like cloning of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. With
state power, extinction is no longer for always. The Ministry of Culture is already
discussing it. There is nothing at all wrong with old-fashioned standards of
morality and decency. It was when those began to fall under the Jewish
propaganda onslaught that the situation in the West first began seriously to
deteriorate. But this will be long process, for we must raise an entire generation of
white children in the old way, the new old way I should say, and even then it can
never be exact duplicate of past.”
“Yeah, backlash never replays like the original,” said Morgan, nodding in
agreement.
“Getting back to money matters, how’s the new currency coming, Ray?”
asked Morehouse.
“Glad you asked,” said Ridgeway. “I have here the first proofs of the bank
note designs for you to look over.” From his briefcase, Ridgeway removed a sheaf
of bright color photocopies. “Pass these around, please, comrades. These are
artists’ renditions of the proposed five, ten, twenty, and fifty-credit notes to be
issued by the State Bank of the NAR.”
“It’s definitely going to be credits?” asked James Salvatore. “Not pounds
and shillings and pence?”
“That was never a realistic proposal,” said Ridgeway. “That’s part of the
problem with staging a revolution with people, some of whom are eccentric
scholarly types. We had one individual on the currency committee who wanted us
to use ducats.”
“What on earth is a ducat?” asked Art Flowers.
“I’m not exactly sure myself,” Ridgeway admitted.
“No hundreds?” asked Farmer Brown, holding the copies up. His left palm
was scarred from a bullet wound he had taken during the July Days, as the period
of confused skirmishing just after the announcement of the Longview peace
conference by American President Chelsea Clinton was coming to be called.
“No, we hope that we can hold down inflation to the point where no one
needs a hundred-credit note for everyday use,” said Ridgeway. He pulled a manila
envelope from his briefcase and rattled some coins out on the table. “These are first
casts of proposed one-credit and two-credit coins, a fifty-cent piece, a twenty-fivecent piece, a ten-cent piece, a two-cent piece, and a penny. You will note they are
all larger than American coins, so they will make a satisfying chink in the pocket.
That may sound silly, but psychology is very important in maintaining confidence
in a currency. For the same reason, you will notice the bank notes are larger than
American dollars or that puny euro. If your money is larger, you feel like you have
more of it. Recent American coinage is the smallest in the world; it’s like having a
pocket full of bird seed. The two-credit coin is composed of twenty-five percent
gold alloy and the one-credit coin is half silver and half nickel, so these coins have
intrinsic worth, although with the insane fluctuations on the markets these days I
couldn’t tell you how much each piece is worth in U.S. dollars. The lesser pieces
are copper, and the penny is brass. We also have larger denomination gold and
platinum coins on the drawing board, up to fifty credits.”
“I thought some of the die-hards on the committee wanted no paper money
at all?” commented Joe Jennings.
Ridgeway nodded. “Yes, and that was a bit of a sell, but we’re going to be
very short on precious metals for coinage, and human nature being what it is, once
we come out with any gold and silver coinage at all there’s bound to be hoarding.
We have to make sure there’s enough actual, physical money in circulation to keep
our economy going.”
“That’s Bob Mathews on the one-credit coin?” asked Fiona Bonnar, holding
it up to the light.
“Yes,” said Ridgeway. “Each coin has heads and tails. The two-credit coin
has two heads, actually, Lewis and Clark in overlapping profile, and a depiction of
the Astoria bridge on the reverse for the place where they wintered in 1805. David
Lane’s on the fifty-cent piece, Vicky Weaver’s on the quarter, Gordon Kahl is on
the dime, Kathy Ainsworth is on the nickel, Jesse Lockhart is on the tuppence, and
Adolf Hitler is on the penny. The tails are mostly depictions of Northwest animals,
as you can see. A bear, a wolf, an eagle, a salmon, and a moose, but the penny has
the seal of the Republic on it and the bridge is on the two-credit coin, like I said.
On the bills, that’s Melanie Young on the five-credit note…”
“It’s pink!” said Fiona Bonnar with a scowl. “Mel Young of all women
didn’t wear pink, I assure you!”
“The colors are just suggestions, comrade,” Ridgeway told her. “All of these
designs will be submitted to the Convention for full debate and approval, of course.
The green ten-credit note shows Pastor Richard Butler, the blue twenty-credit bill
depicts George Lincoln Rockwell, and the brown and purple fifty shows Gus
Singer and his family, who were murdered on 10/22 by the FBI and It Takes a
Village, and whose deaths precipitated the War of Independence. That engraving
was made from one of their family photographs found in the burned-out ruins of
the Singer home in Coeur d’Alene. The reverse views on the bills show Northwest
scenic views—Mount Rainier, Glacier National Park, Multnomah Falls, and
Cannon Beach. Some of us didn’t want to put serial numbers on the bills, but that
has to be, as a prevention against counterfeiting.”
“You’re bringing these to the Convention floor?” asked Morehouse.
“Brian is going to introduce them tomorrow,” said Ridgeway.
“Still looking for a six-month switchover?” inquired Dr. Hassling.
“Yes,” confirmed Ridgeway. “From June the first, both currencies will be
legal tender within the Republic, but the State Bank and the government will
slowly bleed down the Federal Reserve notes by retaining them and paying out all
cash and check disbursements in Northwest credits instead of dollars, one for one.
On New Year’s Day of next year, we go over completely, and the U.S. dollar will
no longer be legal tender. There will be a black market in dollars for many years,
of course, and we’re just going to have to accept this. It’s going to take time for
people to gain confidence in the Republic and the Republic’s money.”
“Joe, how are we coming along on unhooking from the internet?” asked
Morehouse.
“Getting there. The government and essential functions, anyway. It’s vital
that the Northwest Republic reverse the dependence on computers to perform
every task which has become the main feature of Western commerce and
government over the past five decades,” said Jennings. “Back under the ZOG
régime, whenever there was an extended power failure and everybody’s computers
went down, there was no provision for doing anything manually, and nobody knew
how to do most things offline even if there had been. There have already been a
number of serious virus attacks made against computer networks here in the
Republic, some of them from Israel, but others from within the United States.
Those cyber-attacks may or may not have had the approval and assistance of the
American authorities.
“The problem is that it’s hard to undo the habits of a lifetime,” Jennings
went on. “Do you know there are office workers in the Northwest who have no
idea what a filing cabinet even is? Almost all of our departments are taking over
from bodies that existed under the United States, and everybody from Security to
Finance needs to take possession and access records that are computerized and
therefore vulnerable to destruction by cyber-attack. At the very least we need to
construct self-contained intranets for our government that have no connection to
the world wide web. That way, we only need to worry about actual spies getting
access to a terminal and uploading a virus off a portable flash drive or similar
device, although even that’s too risky to my mind.”
“So what are you doing about it?” asked Barrow.
“I’m sure most of you have met our de-computerization advisors in your
own departments?” asked Jennings. There were groans and muttering around the
table. “Yes, I know, they’re irritating, but this has to be done, comrades. You think
they’re just throwing monkey wrenches and making more work for you, but if you
take the easy way out and fall back on that cyber-crutch, you will come in one
morning and find everything you’ve accomplished since Longview fried to a crisp
by some Israeli worm. The clack clack clack of the typewriter, the click click of the
manual calculator, and the rumble and thump of filing cabinet drawers must be
heard once more in the land, my friends. Besides, admin workers need to learn to
start thinking about what they’re doing again, not just letting the computer do it for
them, and doing whatever the computer tells them to do.”
“How about internet access from the Republic to the worldwide web as a
whole?” asked Salvatore.
“We have control of the major hubs and our guys are working on installing
all kinds of firewalls and anti-virus protection at the hubs, but some malware will
still going to get through,” said Jennings. “We have to make sure that no system
we absolutely need to have up and running all the time has any outside access at
all, and that’s going to take a while to implement. Cell phones and cell relay towers
are especially vulnerable.”
“Gary, you’re up,” said Morehouse. “How is our manufacturing capacity
shaping up?”
“Well, I’ve got some bad news, some good news, and some very good
news,” Bresler told them.
“Very good news sounds very good,” said Stepanov.
“The very good new is that even if everything else goes south, we’ll be able
to drown our sorrows,” said Bresler. “We’ve got dozens of microbreweries and
wineries all over Oregon and Washington, almost all of which are intact, and in
most cases the operators and staff have stuck around, if only so as not to be out
their investment. Land and plant is a lot harder to run away from than a
government check and a McMansion. A couple of wineries have small distilleries
attached to make brandy out of their own product, and they’ve indicated interest in
expanding that aspect of their businesses now they have a captive market, so to
speak. Plus there’s a lot of export potential. We make some really good brew and
hooch up here in the Northland. You can always find a market somewhere for
anything that will get people plastered, be it Northwest wine, Northwest beer, or
Northwest pot. There’s another potential revenue stream for you, Ray.”
“That’s nice for the drunks and the stoners, but what about heavy industry?”
asked Morehouse.
“That’s the merely good news. We’re in better shape than we thought
possible a few months ago,” Bresler told them. “There used to be a fair amount of
industry in the Northwest before globalization set in, and America as a whole
stopped manufacturing and shipped all the jobs out to China and Guatemala. In
many cases, nobody wanted the factories to convert to yuppie condos or boutiques,
and so the plants were just mothballed and forgotten about. My department has so
far identified over a thousand manufacturing facilities which, in our opinion, could
be re-commissioned and put back into production, either with their original
products or else re-tooled for other stuff. Everything from shoes and electronic
circuit boards to automotive engines and chemicals. These were mostly small
plants, true, but then we’re not trying to break into world markets or supply the
entire North American continent with widgets or whatever, just keep the Northwest
Republic going in a completely self-contained economy.”
“Do we have any steel production at all?” asked Morehouse.
“Well, yeah, we’re producing our own steel now, just not exactly making it,”
explained Bresler.
“Say again?” asked Morgan.
“Recycling. There are now smelting and re-fabrication mills going in Idaho
Falls, Spokane, Bellingham, several in Seattle and Portland, and one in The Dalles.
We have thousands of Labor Service people digging through old American
landfills, junk yards, auto graveyards, so forth and so on and salvaging everything
metal from tin and aluminum cans to junked Gremlins and Priuses. We’re shipping
it to these plants I mentioned, where they are melting it all down and re-fabricating
it into steel and iron pipe, steel and iron construction rebar, or making simple
ingots of tin and aluminum and lengths of steel bar for whenever we can get a
proper production system set up. More good news is that this source will last us for
years. The number of old and new landfills in the Northwest and the riches that can
be harvested from them seems to be damned near limitless. Until you look at what
they throw away, you can’t begin to understand what a fantastically wasteful
society the United States of America is. Was, I should say. I tell you that properly
extracted and utilized, we have a supply of raw industrial metal in those dumps that
will last us ten years. We’re also working on a plant in Puyallup to melt down and
reprocess plastic, and once that gets up and running, our supply of raw material
from the landfills will be virtually bottomless. We will be able to manufacture all
our plastic needs, especially when we eliminate plastic beverage receptacles and go
back to the old system of glass deposit bottles, for everything from ginger ale and
beer to cooking oil and Worcestershire sauce.”
“And now for the bad news you mentioned?” asked Barrow.
“Paul’s department,” said Bresler. “Energy. The energy problem is crucial
for industrial reconstruction as well as every damned thing else. Our coal-burning
power stations are running way low, and we have lost all our nuclear capacity.
That’s the one thing the Americans did efficiently after Longview. Apparently,
they already had protocols in place for removing the fuel rods and scuttling the
reactors on all our nuclear power plants, draining the heavy water and the cooling
towers, so forth and so on. It makes you wonder how long they knew that
Northwest independence was coming.”
“Paul?” asked Morehouse.
“He’s right,” spoke up Dr. Paul Hassling. “The fuel rods have been
completely removed from Hanford and from the Columbia River reactors. Prescot
in Oregon, the Idaho Falls light water reactor and the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory reactor, the Medford plant, all of them are now shut down. Those
plants are useless until we can convert them to coal or methane, and that’s going to
be a five-star bitch, technically and financially. I gave Ray here some estimates a
while back, and I thought he was going to have a coronary.”
“It can be done, Red,” Ridgeway told them glumly, “But it’s going to put a
major hole in our inheritance that I really wish we could spend elsewhere,
especially on military uses.”
“What are we doing about it?” asked Morehouse.
“Transferring as much of the grid as we can to coal and diesel generating
stations, but we’re dangerously overloaded,” replied Hassling. “I’m busting our
butts trying to up the capacity on water-power turbines along the Columbia, and
we’re trying to get those silly windmill things down on the coast working again,
but that’s not much good in the short term. Seattle and Portland and Spokane are
still experiencing rolling brownouts. I have been assigned over twenty-thousand
Labor Service personnel to obtain alternative fuel sources for electrical power
generation, which is a fancy way of saying find anything that will burn instead of
coal or diesel fuel, but it’s all makeshift. It’s crude and clumsy as hell, and we
can’t keep it up for too long. We’re paying private lumber crews for wood, of
course, but we’re also going through former ghetto and non-white housing areas in
Portland and Seattle and other urban areas where the cockroaches used to nest.
We’re tearing down any housing units that appear to have been rendered
hopelessly beyond repair or renovation, which is most everything that niggers or
beaners lived in, and we’re reducing all the wood to burnable chunks with trash
compactors and chain saws. Then we ship it out by rail or truck to the power
plants. Thankfully, most Northwest generating plants have rail connections we’ve
been able to repair and refurbish, because they were built back in the days before
Amurrica destroyed her railroads at the behest of the Mob-ruled Teamsters Union
and the big oil companies. We can keep the coal-fired stations going for a while by
burning nigger shacks, and also by burning hundreds of thousands of Jew and
liberal books and magazines the Culture Ministry is cleaning out of the libraries
and bookstores, plus the accumulated paper records and computer printouts of state
and federal government for the past hundred years that we keep finding by the
warehouse-full. But the diesel-powered stations are another matter. I have to tell
you, gentlemen …”
“And lady,” broke in Fiona Bonnar.
“And lady,” Hassling went on with a bow, “I have to tell you that we now
have only a week’s supply of diesel fuel left in the entire Republic, almost all of
which has to go to the power stations. There are certain substitutes we can use, and
I’ve already got some diesel stations running on everything from kerosene to
cooking oil, but we still need the real stuff, a lot of it. The trucks that still transport
almost all of our goods are falling idle. Gasoline is almost as badly in short supply.
It’s true that diesel engines can run on other fuels, but even raiding all the
Republic’s greasy spoons isn’t going to supply enough to replace the real McCoy.”
“Alternative sources?” asked Morehouse. “I mean besides draining the
cafeteria’s French fry cooker?”
“Dr. Joseph Cord’s new Northwest Institute of Technology on the University
of Washington campus is working full speed on developing a protocol for
converting diesel generators to methane and alcohol, as well as various forms of
substitute diesel fuel, anything that might work. Last week three small fuel alcohol
plants went into production in Tacoma, McMinnville, and Spokane. The two on the
coast are processing corn, and the one in Spokane uses potatoes. The same hog
farms that Force 101 is using for refuse disposal are collecting the guano and
beginning methane production in a small way, but none of these solutions are
going to come on line within the next week. The energy problem has to be
addressed now. Somehow we must get fuel imports from the United States and
Canada resumed, or else in a month’s time we really will be driving horses and
buggies and working by candlelight.”
Morehouse looked at his watch, “That is the subject of our conference call,
and it’s time,” he said. He leaned over to Barrow. “Frank, are Colonel Randall and
his team in place?” he asked in a low voice.
“That’s affirmative. I just got the text a few minutes ago,” said Barrow. “He
has been briefed on the nature and purpose of his mission, but bear in mind he’s
going to have to play it by ear as to deciding when and how to proceed.”
Morehouse touched a button under the table, and the curtains at one end of
the room opened to reveal a huge plasma screen connected to a satellite uplink. A
little light popped on in the upper right-hand corner, and digital lettering appeared
on the screen. It read 60 seconds to conference. 59 seconds to conference, 58
seconds … etcetera. Morehouse chuckled. “I understand that the last time this
system was used was when Chelsea Clinton informed the assembled state
government of Washington that the United States of America now considered them
to be expendable, and that Jerry Reb was coming for them.”
“I woulda loved to’ve been a fly on the wall at that bit of must-see TV,”
laughed John Corbett Morgan.
“It got pretty hysterical,” said Morehouse reminiscently. “The speaker of the
state Senate shot himself in the chair you’re sitting in, James. We found blood
splatters and a bullet hole on the wall behind you.”
The screen suddenly split into six squares, each one showing the face of a
man in a business suit sitting behind a desk. The split screen was reproduced on
two smaller monitors in the center of the ministerial conference table, and below
each face was a name and title. The cabinet had been briefed in detail on each of
these men and what his particular problem was with the Northwest Republic.
Aaron Levy, CEO, Foodway Stores in Albany, New York, was a plumpfaced Jew whose quivering jowls and bulging eyes indicated he was in a high state
of agitation as he stared at the mortal enemies of his race.
Sir Reginald Shaw, Chairman, Anglo-Standard Petroleum, appearing from
London, was merely a toffee-nosed British git who found the whole racism thing
uncouth—(“not the done thing, don’t y’know?”) and who considered the
Northwesters to be bad hats and bad credit risks. (“Terrorists, rum lot of chaps,
don’t y’know? Can’t do business with ‘em, of course.”)
Malcolm Dale Henderson, Chairman, United Parcel Express, headquartered
in Indianapolis, Indiana, was a blank-faced multi-millionaire about 60 years of age,
who was married to a former Miss Mexico as his third trophy wife and whose
white son by his first marriage had been a Marine Corps captain who was killed in
the battle of Portland.
William Robert “Billy Bob” Wiggins, Chairman, Associated American
Petroleum Products, was a billionaire from Houston and a rabid Christian Zionist
who sported a white ten-gallon hat even on video conference calls like this one.
They could see the small stand on his desk bearing miniature flags of the U.S.A.,
the Lone Star state flag of Texas, and Israel.
Michael Perlman, CEO, Continental Foods out of Los Angeles, was a small
Jewish man with frizzy, black, almost negroid hair, liver lips and a nose that
looked like a deformed mushroom. His eyes were literally rolling behind the thick
lenses of his spectacles.
Oliver Lodge, President of North American Consolidated Industries and also
President of the American Business Association, was sitting in from Haverhill,
Massachusetts. He was a quiet and expensively dressed man of about 50 who had
been an American delegate to the Longview peace conference.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said Morehouse. “I am Henry Morehouse,
Vice President of the Northwest American Republic and Speaker of the Northwest
Constitutional Convention. These comrades assembled here with me are the
Council of Ministers of the Northwest Republic, what most countries refer to as the
cabinet. I won’t introduce them all individually, although you may know some of
them from the news media. I know Mr. Lodge recognizes General Barrow and
General Morgan from Longview.”
“I do indeed remember General Barrow from many lengthy sessions,” said
Lodge. “I also recognize my former colleague Mr. Stanhope, who regretfully
turned out to be a traitor to his country.”
“I found that I could no longer serve both my country and basic human
decency, and I made my choice,” said Stanhope evenly. “I’m sorry if I have
thereby forfeited your respect and your friendship, Oliver, but I knew the price of
that choice beforehand.”
“No buyer’s remorse, Walter?” queried Lodge archly.
“None,” said Stanhope firmly.
Lodge went on. “If memory serves, when last I saw General Morgan, he was
jamming the barrel of a rather large revolver down Senator Howard Weintraub’s
throat on the floor of the Longview conference room, while that remarkable young
woman you call Nightshade was holding a switchblade to Jeanette Galinsky’s
throat. A very proactive style of diplomacy, and fascinating to watch. [See A
Mighty Fortress by the author.] I presume your cabinet are all of the same school
of international relations?”
“You would be correct in that assumption,” said Morehouse.
“Then I suppose we’re fortunate not to be in the same room with you,” said
Lodge. “I understand why these other five gentlemen are participating, since as I
could have predicted at Longview, your new republic is experiencing difficulty
with your food and energy imports. But why am I being honored with inclusion in
this minor historical event?”
“Your word carries weight in the business and economic world, Mr. Lodge,
and you have personal experience with us,” said Barrow. “You can assure others as
needed that we say what we mean, and we mean what we say. At present we have
no need to deal with any of your concerns directly, but that may change, and you
know almost all the people we will need to do business with.”
“You’re not doing business with any of us, you goyische gonavim!” shouted
Michael Perlman in fury.
“Certainly not with any Jewish firm, and I don’t have to tell you, that’s a lot
of companies!” snapped Aaron Levy. “What, are you meshugah? Any Jew do
business with you Nazi murderers! You vant I should spit right on dis video lens?
You vant?” Levy suited the action to the word.
“You have laid violent hands on the Apple of God’s Eye,” rumbled the
Texan Wiggins sternly.
“Your people killed my son,” said Henderson.
“And your people murdered my wife, but I’m sitting here talking to you,
because it has to be done,” Morgan told him steadily.
“There is also a legal problem, Mr. Vice President,” began Lodge.
“Don’t call him that!” shouted Perlman from Los Angeles. “He is Vice
President of nothing! Nothing!”
“I don’t think wishful thinking is the way to go here, Mr. Perlman,” said
Lodge. “We need to accept what is, and to my never-ending astonishment, it turns
out that this is the way things are. As I was saying, Mr. Morehouse, there is a legal
issue as well. The Department of Commerce has already prohibited any dealings
with the territory now under your control, and as soon as we can figure out who
will be President in a few months’ time and therefore who signs the laws, Congress
will be imposing some of the most stringent economic sanctions in world history
on the Northwest. You can’t ask us to disobey the law.”
“Tyrants are always the law, Mr. Lodge,” spoke up Gary Bresler. “That is
what makes them different from common or garden variety gangsters.”
“Like you?” sneered Levy.
“It is only because we chose to defy the oppressor’s law that we regained
our freedom,” said Morehouse levelly. “Mr. Lodge, if you’re talking about ethics,
pardon me if I’m not too impressed with multinational corporations’ history of
strict legality and obedience to the laws of the countries wherein they operate.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. We are moving full speed ahead in this new country
of ours to create a completely self-contained economy wherein we grow or
manufacture everything we need from automobiles to weapons, on through
clothing, shoes, tools, and down to pancake mix, candy canes for Christmas, and
some of the best beer you’ll ever drink, which actually we’ve already got.
Eventually, your sanctions will be a dead letter, but that time is not now. Right
now we need some things that we can only get from elsewhere, and until we can
establish trading relationships with other countries throughout the world, that
means doing business with American corporations.
“Specifically we need three things. We need drugs and medical supplies,
including parts for medical equipment in our hospitals. We need energy, especially
gasoline and even more urgently, diesel fuel to run our electric power stations.
Finally we need food. Meat and agricultural produce we can supply on our own,
from our own land. The Northwest is a breadbasket, but for the next few years until
we get ourselves sorted out, we will need staples like rice, beans, canned goods,
sugar, flour, coffee and tea, salt, that kind of thing. We need Sir Reginald and Mr.
Wiggins and all the companies under their control to resume tanker and pipeline
shipments of fuel to gas stations and other end users here. We need that right away,
as in today. We need Mr. Levy and Mr. Perlman to resume shipment of certain
basic food items, which we will list for you, to the various chain grocery stores and
other existing outlets in the Northwest. We need Mr. Henderson to end his ban on
UPE shipments to the Republic, so we can make our own arrangements for needed
pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to be delivered on his vehicles, and also so
that people living outside the Republic can help out their relatives in the Northwest
individually, by sending them needed commodities. We understand that this will
cause difficulties on your end, and you will of course be compensated for your
goods and for your trouble. Compensated quite handsomely, in fact. Capitalism in
the past has never been too worried about legalities when there are profits to be
made. You traded under the table with old South Africa, and Iran, and Cuba, and
North Korea willingly enough.”
“Take your money and shove it up your goyische tuches!” shrieked Perlman,
totally out of control. “You will get nothing, nothing from anyone in America or
anyone else in de woild, if de Joosh pipple have anything to say about it, and we
will, you schmucks! Oh yes, we will! I am sitting here by mein shvimming pool in
Brentwood and I am watching TV and I am vatching you all starve and die, you
and your shiksas and your little white brats, I am vatching you all die like dogs!”
A gloved hand appeared in the upper right hand corner of the screen behind
the gibbering Jew-face of Michael Perlman, holding an automatic pistol with a
silencer. There was a spitting sound like a match striking, and then red oozing
liquid covered the videocam.
“Good timing, Charlie!” muttered Barrow under his breath.
“Actually, no, Mr. Perlman, it is we who are watching you die,” said
Morehouse smoothly.
The faces on the other video split screens registered shock and
consternation, then they all twisted wildly as the wealthy men turned their heads
and looked around their plush offices in terror, looking for similar assassins behind
them. All except for Lodge, who smiled wryly. “More of your proactive
diplomacy, Mr. Morehouse?” he asked in a calm voice, sounding almost amused.
“Precisely, Mr. Lodge. One of our boys from Operation We Are Not
Amused whom we persuaded to do an encore down in Tinsel Town.” [See The
Brigade by the author.]
“Nice new friends you’ve got there, Walter,” said Lodge.
“I like ‘em” replied Stanhope.
Red Morehouse struck while the iron was hot, as the blood dripped off the
screen in Perlman’s Los Angeles office and revealed him slumped over his desk
with his brains showing. “Gentlemen, let me lay this out for you nice and neat. We
have spent the past five and a half years spilling a lot of blood to make this new
Homeland of ours. Mostly your blood, but a lot of our own as well, because that is
the price of freedom. We will keep on doing so, whenever it is required. If you try
to starve our children, if you deny our sick people the medicine they need, if you
try to plunge the Northwest into darkness, if you try to harm this Republic in any
way, then we will kill you, because that is what we do to the white man’s enemies.
Then if the man who succeeds to your job refuses to mend his ways, we will kill
him as well. And so forth and so on, until we find someone who thinks enough of
his own skin or who simply likes money enough to play ball with us. How long do
you think it will be before we can find someone in your respective organizations
with such a pragmatic view? Not long, I think. How many more such examples
will we have to make? Not many, I’d guess. Now, you have a choice here. You can
live the rest of your lives surrounded by bodyguards and living in fortresses, which
will do you no good in the long run, or you can accept the verdict of history. The
Northwest American Republic is a fact of life, from now on. Deal with it.”
Morehouse paused, and looked at Henderson. “Mr. Henderson, for what it’s
worth, I offer my sincere sympathy and regret at the death of your son, Captain
Harold Henderson. One of the certainties of war is that young men die. Please, sir,
help us make sure that it doesn’t happen again.” Morehouse reached under the
table and turned off the screen with a snap.
“I just got a coded text,” said Barrow, lifting his cell phone. “Colonel
Randall and his team have E&E’d successfully. They should be back in the
Republic by tomorrow.”
“All right!” exclaimed Morgan happily.
“At the earliest opportunity please convey my congratulations to the Colonel
and his team on a successful operation,” said Morehouse. “Now, I think we can
break for an early supper, comrades. Back in an hour?”
“What are they serving in the cafeteria tonight?” asked Salvatore.
“I think it’s lasagna,” said Morehouse with a smile.
IV. – New Dawn
(Six months after Longview)
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those
attending too small a degree of it” – Thomas Jefferson
The following document, subsequently known as the Basic Act of
Establishment and General Repeal, was published in all major newspapers of the
Northwest Republic and delivered in the form of a nationwide televised address by
the acting State President on March the seventh. Although predating the actual
ratification of the Northwest Constitution by some months, the Basic Act laid
down the ground rules for the new state, and is considered by historians as the
formal beginning of the new Republic and the end of the Cleanup, by formally
reinstituting the rule of law.
***
The Constitutional Convention and government of the Northwest
American Republic, assembled at Olympia, in anticipation of the adoption of the
Constitution of the Republic by the aforesaid Convention, do hereby declare and
proclaim for the purpose of interim governance the following acts of repeal, and do
also decree the following affirmative statutes and acts, to wit:
1. The Constitutional Convention now sitting at Olympia, and the
government instituted by the Convention, are henceforth the sole governing
authority of the Northwest American Republic. Martial law is hereby rescinded in
all remaining counties of the Republic wherein it is still in effect, and the entire
Republic is henceforth under civil authority.
2. All federal, state, municipal, county, and other law enforcement agencies
that existed under the United States are hereby abolished. All law enforcement
plant, property, premises, and personnel are herewith consolidated into the
Northwest Civil Guard.
3. Elections for all offices under the new Constitution to be promulgated and
ratified by the Convention will take place no more than thirty (30) days after
ratification, the precise date to be determined by the Electoral Committee.
4. Graduated Franchise: For the purpose of the Republic’s initial national
elections only, any resident of the NAR over age 18 may be granted third-class
citizenship and one (1) vote thereby, provided they swear an oath of loyalty to the
Republic before an election commissioner and bring the notarized instrument of
said oath to the polls on Election Day.
Residents requesting third-class citizenship must also produce a certificate
from the Civil Guard, affirming that the individual in question did not commit any
acts or crimes in the service of the United States government and/or its
multifarious agencies during the War of Independence that were of an especially
heinous, cruel, or violent nature; and that furthermore, according to all information
available, the said petitioning individual did not at any time during the war act in
the capacity of an informer or collaborator with the United States forces.
Second-class citizenship, carrying two (2) votes for electoral purposes, is
hereby granted to all serving members of the Northwest Defense Force, as well as
to all women who can prove they are the mother of three or more children living in
the home or resident elsewhere in the Republic.
First-class citizenship, carrying three (3) votes for electoral purposes, is
hereby granted to all personnel over the age of 14 years who served in the
Northwest Volunteer Army, or who served the Party in any capacity either during
or prior to the War of Independence. First-class citizenship is also hereby granted
to all members of the Northwest Defense Force who fought in the battle of
Portland from November first through November fourth, or who have been
decorated for valor in combat during the Consolidation, or who served in the unit
designated as Force 101.
5. All laws and ordinances which previously existed under the United States
of America and its state and local governments that in any way prohibit, restrict,
control, or limit the keeping and bearing of arms, the open carrying of arms, and
the possession and transportation of firearms, ammunition, powder, supplies,
cartridge casings, or any other material necessary to the exercise of the First
Amendment of the Northwest Constitution, are hereby repealed and declared to be
null, void, and of no effect.
6. All vouchers, receipts, and IOUs issued by officers and other personnel of
the Northwest Volunteer Army and the Northwest Defense Force for personal
property, cash, food, supplies, vehicles, fuel, weapons and ammunition, or other
material during the War of Independence and the Consolidation must be presented
for payment to any office of the Ministry of Finance or the Northwest Defense
Force within a period of ten (10) years dating from this proclamation. Such
vouchers or receipts must be presented by the original persons to whom they were
issued, or by their legal heirs. Where possible such documents shall be
authenticated by the original issuing NVA or NDF officer if they can be located,
before payment. If the original issuing officer is dead or cannot be located, the
Ministry and the NDF shall make reasonable assumption of good faith and shall
reimburse such creditors.
7. All debts owed to American financial institutions, specifically to include
home mortgages and liens, mortgages and liens on any commercial or industrial
property, credit card debt, automobile debt, student loans, and all other forms of
corporate indebtedness or indebtedness to Jews or Jewish financial institutions that
existed prior to the signing of the treaty at Longview, are hereby declared null and
void. Existing home ownership in the Republic shall be determined on grounds of
present occupancy. The Bureau of Race and Resettlement shall expedite the
transfer of title deeds free and clear to homeowners.
8. All real estate, money, valuables, fixtures, vehicles, and other property
abandoned by white persons who have fled the Republic, will be deeded to the
National Abandoned Property Trust established by the Convention on February 20,
and shall be placed in a state of escrow for a period of one (1) year from the date of
this proclamation. During that time any person seeking the restoration of any real
or personal property thus sequestered, or seeking compensation for any property
which for any reason cannot or will not be returned, may make application at any
office of the Trust or at any Civil Guard station, provided that such application
shall be made in person by the property owner and that said property owner
provide proof of their permanent return to the Northwest Republic.
9. At the conclusion of the one-year period described in the previous
paragraph, any and all abandoned property that remains unclaimed may be sold or
distributed to such governmental or private agencies as the officers of the Trust and
the government of the NAR shall determine.
10. All real estate, money, valuables, fixtures, vehicles, and other abandoned
property reasonably determined to have been owned by Jews, by non-whites, by
sexual deviates, by the United States government or by any American state or local
government, by any corporate entity hostile to the Republic, or by any individual
determined to have been irredeemably hostile to the Republic during the War of
Independence, is herewith declared to be the property of the state and shall be
distributed among the appropriate government departments and agencies. The
Ministry of Defense shall have first refusal on all American military property and
installations. The Ministry of Race and Resettlement shall have first refusal on all
housing for potential use for new immigrants. The Ministry of Finance shall
receive all identifiable enemy cash, stocks and bonds, coins and precious metals,
jewelry, and other movable personal property of value that can be liquidated for
the treasury.
11. The retail sale of alcoholic beverages and intoxicating liquors is hereby
declared to be a state revenue monopoly, and shall be administered through the
Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which shall be a statutory body to be run at a
profit for the benefit of the treasury. Private sale of alcoholic beverages by
individuals and businesses shall be legal, but subject to taxation to be determined
at a later date.
12. The retail sale of tobacco products is hereby declared to be a state
revenue monopoly, and shall be administered through the Tobacco Control Board,
which shall be a statutory body to be run at a profit for the benefit of the treasury.
Private cultivation of tobacco and sale of tobacco products shall be legal, but
subject to taxation to be determined at a later date.
13. All laws and ordinances of the United States and its several states and
local authorities prohibiting the use, possession, cultivation, and transportation of
marijuana and/or cannabis products are hereby repealed and rendered null and
void. The Ministry of Finance and the future Parliament may at their discretion
impose excise taxes on the cultivation of cannabis hemp and the manufacture and
sale of marijuana and cannabis-related products.
14. The use, possession, sale, importation and transportation of hard
narcotics such as powdered cocaine, crack or crystal cocaine, methamphetamine,
ecstasy, heroin, PCP and lysergic acid shall not be illegal per se, but until such
time as these substances pose no further risk to the fabric of society, shall be
treated by the Civil Guard and the Ministry of Justice as an anti-social activity and
dealt with as the appropriate authorities see fit. The use of capital punishment is
authorized in especially egregious cases.
15. Homosexuality is henceforth legally defined as a mental illness. Those
suffering from this condition will be suitably confined in secure mental facilities
for treatment. The Civil Guard and Ministry of Justice may reserve the right to
prosecute the commission of actual homosexual acts through the criminal code.
16. The practice of infanticide by abortion is prohibited, except in cases
where two physicians certify to the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of
Justice that the prospective carrying of a fetus to full term constitutes a clear and
present danger to the life of the mother, or else that the fetus will be born
irremediably mentally retarded, brain-damaged, or dead. Subsequent confirmation
is to be obtained prior to any abortive procedure by a third physician acting under
the direction of the Ministry of Public Health. Individual cases of infanticide will
be treated by the state and by law enforcement as acts of premeditated murder.
17. National Service. The first national service intake of young people aged
18 to 20 who have completed high school will begin on June 21. All citizens and
residents of the Republic aged from 15 to 20 must immediately register for national
service.
National Service shall consist of one (1) year in the National Labor Service
and two (2) years in the Northwest Defense Force for males, and two (2) years in
the National Labor Service for females. Female citizens and residents of the
Republic may be exempted from up to one (1) year of national service on grounds
of impending or recent maternity. For the first three (3) years from the date of this
proclamation, young men may upon graduation from high school opt to go directly
into the Northwest Defense Force for a period of two (2) years.
All persons having completed national service will subsequently be eligible
to attend any college, university, or technical school in the Republic free of charge
for tuition and housing.
18. All laws and ordinances that existed under the United States and its
several states and local authorities dealing with taxation, regulation, and/or control
of private business and enterprise are hereby repealed and rendered null and void,
and of no effect.
19. All laws and ordinances that existed under the United States and its
several states and local authorities dealing with the taxation of income, and of
homesteads housing individuals and families, are hereby repealed and rendered
null and void, and of no effect.
20. The conversion of the Northwest American Republic to its own
currency, the Northwest credit, shall begin on the first day of July of this year for a
transitional period of six months until the thirty-first day of December, after which
date no moneys other than the Northwest credit shall be accepted as legal tender in
the Republic.
***
For Amber Myers, the dreaded Knock on the Door finally came one balmy
evening in late April. Actually the Knock On The Door was a ring at the doorbell,
and it came just as the family was sitting down to dinner.
“What’s for dessert?” asked Georgia, as she usually did at the beginning of
any meal.
“I made us brownies,” said Amber. “I wanted to serve ice cream with them,
but there’s no more ice cream in the stores.”
“Why not?” asked Georgia.
“Because the Nazis ate it all!” replied Amber viciously.
“Mom, I’m ten years old, not four,” said Georgia in disgust. “Come on,
really, why is there no ice cream in the stores?”
“Because the United States government has imposed economic sanctions on
the Northwest,” explained Dr. Clancy Myers. He pointedly avoided using the term
Northwest Republic to avoid setting off his wife into another one of her hissy fits.
“That means that no one in America is supposed to do business with us or send us
anything to buy or sell. The sanctions aren’t working very well, at least not so far.
Too much border, and too many people interested in making a buck off smuggling.
The U.S.A. was never able to seal off the southern border sufficiently to stop
illegal immigration, and they’re not having much more success now with the even
longer border around the Northwest. Certain items like gasoline are more
expensive than they used to be, and a lot of luxury items aren’t available any more,
but nobody is actually going hungry, or doing without basic needs like clothing
and heat and most medicine. But one effect of the sanctions is that there’s not the
kind of big selection of merchandise there used to be in the stores. Sometimes we
run short on certain items. This week it happens to be ice cream.”
“The shelves in Southgate Mall are half empty,” said Amber mournfully.
“So are the shelves in Safeway. Mighty Mart is even worse.”
“You always hated Mighty Mart, Mom,” said Georgia. “Mighty Mart never
had anything but cheap Chinese crap anyway, you said so.”
“That’s true,” agreed Clancy. “Now people in Missoula can go downtown to
stores owned by local people, small businessmen who can make a living once
again now that they don’t have to compete with Chinese slave labor via Mighty
Mart. Also, it means we get things fixed when they break and we don’t just throw
them away and go to Mighty Mart and buy another one.” He avoided saying “white
people” for the same reason he avoided saying “Northwest Republic.” Clancy was
coming to realize that the Party and the new authorities weren’t quite the ogres
everyone had expected, but he was still worried that his wife would one day lose it
and go off into an anti-NAR tirade in public that might attract the attention of this
new Bureau of State Security that everyone was whispering about.
“And you didn’t used to like all those Mexicans, either,” said Kevin
reminded his mother as he spooned mashed potatoes into his mouth.
“Kevin, that’s not true!” snapped Amber.
“Then why did you always wrinkle your nose and tap your toes and snort
like a horse when they held us up in the line?” asked Kevin. “I guess it’s true what
Mr. Overbury at school says. Liberals are hypocrites. They want to tell everybody
else how to live, but they don’t want to live in the messes they create.”
“Oh, my God, what are these monsters turning you into?” moaned Amber.
“I suppose the Nazis make poor Mr. Overbury say those things, or else they’ll
come and take him away in the night. And don’t tell me they’re not doing just that
very thing, Clancy! You ought to know, after what happened to poor Linda!”
“I have no intention of denying it, dear,” said Dr. Myers with a sigh.
It was true. Linda Barnard at the University had disappeared on Christmas
Eve, and Clancy had been delegated by the faculty to approach Jason Stockdale
about it, since he seemed to have a friendly relationship with the new chancellor.
Stockdale had proclaimed an open door policy, and so Myers took advantage of it.
He went to Stockdale’s office on the day after New Year’s and knocked on the
door, noting with approval that the young man had exchanged his NDF uniform for
a sober and more academic suit and tie. “Linda who?” Stockdale had replied to the
question, arching his eyebrows.
“Professor Linda Barnard from the Media and Journalism Department,” said
Clancy patiently. “She’s missing, but her mother is still in the nursing home, her
car is in her garage, and I’m told there is no sign she took any of her things with
her or that she left voluntarily. Mr. Stockdale, you know quite well who and what
I’m talking about. I don’t expect you to reveal classified information, if that’s what
this is, but if she’s dead, her friends would like to know. I’d also like to know if
we’re going to be arrested and disappear ourselves, if we have a quiet private
memorial service for Linda and for the Copettas?”
“I repeat, Linda who?” asked Stockdale. “There is no record of any such
person ever having worked here at the University of Montana, on the faculty or in
any other capacity,” he went on. “Check the computer and personnel files yourself
if you don’t believe me. In fact, you will find that no such person ever existed. No
driver’s license, no voter’s registration, no bank records, no property listing. If you
go to the house this imaginary individual allegedly lived in, you will find that the
premises have been taken over by the Bureau of Race and Resettlement, and for all
I know there may be a family of white refugees from Florida or Toronto living
there already. I suspect that given time, there will eventually be no birth certificate
or old social security number or anything like that. We’ve got a lot of really good
computer people working for us over in Olympia who specialize in correcting
erroneous public records all throughout North America, and even the world. You
won’t even find any references to any such individual in back issues of the school
paper. Those files have been sequestered until a number of factual errors in them
can be corrected. It seems our student reporters were very sloppy; there are all
kinds of references in there to people who never existed and events that never
occurred. Don’t worry; we’ll have definitive editions back in the archives soon.”
“Good God, it’s like 1984!” groaned Clancy, slumping down into a chair in
front of Stockdale’s desk. “Right down the memory hole! Mr. Stockdale, I …”
“Call me Jason. You did when I was in your class, and I see no reason to get
all formal now.”
“Uh, I did explain to you that the favor you think we did for Jenny was done
without the knowledge of my wife or myself?” asked Myers.
“Yes, I know, it was Peanut and Kevin and Bobby, but the end effect is the
same,” said Stockdale. “My wife owes her life to your family.”
“Then hopefully I can speak a bit more freely than most without going down
the memory hole myself,” said Myers. “Jason, I won’t deny that I see a lot of good
coming out of your revolution. I see it already, here in the university where we can
actually teach without fear again, to students who really want to learn. Not to
mention our new faculty—my God, we now have three Nobel laureates teaching
here who have fled from Europe! Just not having to worry about the constant petty
crime from Mexicans and drug addicts is wonderful, being able to leave my house
and my car unlocked, and not having to worry about Georgia if she’s an hour or so
late coming home from school, because I can be sure she hasn’t been snatched off
the street by some kind of pedophile freak. I’m genuinely grateful for that, Jason.
We all are. You guys are well on your way to winning people’s hearts and minds,
and then you go and do something like this! I suppose my attitude is typical of
people around here for whom the jury is still out: thanks for getting the American
assholes off our backs, now when are you going to stop killing people?”
“Hmmm …” said Stockdale, tapping his pen on the desk. “Look, Dr. Myers,
I was just a Volunteer, a common or garden-variety shoot-‘em-in-the-head and
wire-a-bomb-to-their-car type. I’m not a trained Party political officer or a
historian like Doctor Luger, but I’ll answer that as best I can. I think if you asked
every Northwest Volunteer why he or she did what they did during the war, you’d
get a different answer each time. I admit that a lot of us—hey, maybe most of us—
joined the NVA and staged this revolution purely out of personal motives of anger
and revenge, and there’s nothing wrong with that, or unexpected. Very few people
are deep philosophical types, and fewer still actually base their behavior and their
lives on profound moral principles. Hell, we were lucky enough back in the ‘teens
to find that first thousand white people who still could base their behavior and their
lives on some kind of idealistic principle. I was one such person, though, and
here’s my take on it.
“At some point in time, a long time ago, our whole civilization started to
slide off the tracks. There’s all kinds of debate as to when that point was, and
everybody’s got a pet theory. Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati, the Civil War,
the establishment of the Federal Reserve, the election of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, whatever. The fact remains that by the time you and I were born, all of
Western civilization was off the track and sinking into a swamp. Not only
civilization, but the very existence of the race that created it was in question. You
know the rap, I’m sure. I won’t ask you if you agree, because what matters is that
the new government agrees.” Stockdale leaned forward. “For the first time in
generations, Dr. Myers, white people now have a country of our own, and the
forces resisting the existential crisis of the white race now have the full power of a
modern state behind us.
“What we have to do, Dr. Myers, is wrench that train of Western civilization
back onto the track by force, the same way we took this land from the United
States, because it is now apparent that nothing else will work. Our enemies are
utterly implacable, they are impervious to civil argument or reason, and so from
now on, they get a club upside the head. Among other things, that means avoiding
the mistakes of the past. This experiment was tried once before, during the last
century in Germany, and the Germans made a terrible mistake that eventually cost
them the life of their nation. They allowed the Jews and the lefty scum to conduct a
six-year campaign of incitement to hatred and economic warfare. Eventually the
Jews got their war. That’s not going to happen this time,” Stockdale went on in a
grim voice. “We will not allow disloyalty, subversion, incitement or cultural
poisoning from within the Republic or from outside it. This non-existent person
you referred to and all like her are finally going to hear the word no, loud and
clear. She’s heard it already, and though I don’t know for certain, I suspect it was
the last thing she ever heard.”
Clancy groaned and buried his face in his hands; Stockdale ignored him.
“We are now a free country, but in order to keep us that way, we do make a few
very basic demands on our own people. One of them is that every young man must
become a soldier for a time and defend their country and their civilization,
including your son Kevin and my brother Bobby when their time comes. Another
demand is that from now on, our people refrain from two or three specific
behaviors that our instinct teaches us are vile and wicked, and which our history
and experience as a people teaches us are socially and culturally poisonous.
“Avoiding these behaviors is not particularly onerous or hard; there is
nothing at all painful or intolerably restrictive to my personal liberty about not
doing these things. I, for one, have never had any difficulty refraining from fucking
other men in the ass. It’s an incredibly easy thing not to do. Nor have I ever been
so bloody bird-brained stupid as to believe that the Jews are God’s Chosen people
or that NS Germany gassed six million of them. Even if I did, I would have sense
enough to keep my mouth shut about it, find something else in life to concern
myself with, and not attempt to do harm to others for the sake of this weird notion.
This non-existent person that you speak of was fully aware of what her position
would be in a society run by moral decency, and yet like so many of her kind she
was so stupidly arrogant as to believe the rules did not apply to her, and that what
she did was a personal matter that was none of anyone else’s business. She found
out the hard way that she was wrong, but she wasn’t just wrong, she was bad.
Sinful, if you want to put a religious slant on it. We are returning to the old ways
where gray areas are few and far between, and what is bad and sinful is not only
not tolerated, but punished.
“As to the removal of such people from the historic record insofar as it is
possible for us to do so, there are two reasons for that. In the first place, we have
no intention of allowing our living enemies to make political and propaganda hay
from our dead ones. They will anyway, since of course, we can’t completely erase
a hundred years of filth from official memory, but as a matter of policy we intend
to make it as hard for them to do so as possible. We don’t give them a single inch,
not ever. The second reason is a moral one. This endless procession of deviancy
and corruption and sin that has trooped through everyone’s lives for the past
century deserves to be forgotten as much as possible. There is always shit in the
sewers, but it needs to stay there and not overflow into the streets and onto
people’s lawns. Allowing these people to have names and human faces detracts
from the overriding magnitude and import of their crimes. It generates sympathy
which they don’t deserve. We don’t want anyone to put a human face on their
revolting behavior. It is enough to know that it happened, and it must never happen
again. We don’t need to wallow in endless details.”
“And what the hell gives you the right to erase human beings from memory
as if they never existed?” Clancy demanded.
“What gives us that right?” chuckled Jason. “We’re the guys with the guns
and the will to use them, that’s what. We gained that right when we finally stopped
tapping on computer keyboards and stood up to ZOG with weapons in our hands
and spilled blood, including our own, to obtain it. Dr. Myers, there are certain
things in life that simply have to be done, for no other reason than because they are
right. You don’t agonize or introspect over these things, you simply do them, and
you never, ever talk about them afterward.”
“But these are people, dammit!” shouted Clancy.
“Of course they are,” said Jason, nodding in agreement. “Bad people. People
are the source of everything that’s wrong in the world, in case you haven’t noticed.
Back in the old days, screwed-up angst-ridden and disillusioned young white
people used to moan about how life sucks, and the world is a horrible place. Not
true. Life is actually wonderful, and the world is a beautiful place. It’s people and
their behavior who make it horrible and sad. Now there are a few less of those
people here in the Northwest.”
Back at the Myers family dinner table, Clancy asked Kevin, “Overbury is
your history teacher, right?”
“Nobody makes Mister Overbury say anything, Mom. He’s just saying what
he always wanted to say,” Kevin told his mother. “He explained that to us. Now
he’s free to teach us real history, what really happened, and not what some
politically correct school board full of mud people and faggots say happened, most
of which is bullshit.”
Amber was about to light into her son for his language when the doorbell
rang. Amber got up and peeped out the curtains she always kept pulled over the
picture window these days. She turned to her husband, her face white as a sheet.
“Clancy!” she whispered. “It’s happening! They’ve come for me!”
Clancy got up and looked out the window. “Amber, that’s just one of the
new police cars,” he told her.
“The blue, white and green ones?” asked Kevin.
“Yes. The Civil Guard, it’s called now.”
The doorbell rang again. “I’ll get it,” said Clancy steadily. He was unsettled
and nervous; despite the lack of any real outward appearance of a totalitarian
police state, he couldn’t help but remember Linda Barnard’s disappearance. Had
they just sent one single car for her?
“No, don’t interfere, Clancy, it’s me they want!” announced Amber
dramatically. She threw open the door.
“Good evening, ma’am,” said a male voice outside on the front steps. “Are
you Mrs. Amber Myers?”
“That’s Ms. Amber Escott-Myers to you, fascist scum!” Amber replied in a
snide yet shaky voice. His wife was genuinely terrified, but she was still trying to
show courage in front of the children, and Clancy couldn’t help but admire her for
it. “Finally made it to the top of your little list, did I?”
“Uh, yes, ma’am, you did,” said the voice. Clancy stepped to his wife’s side
and saw a single police officer standing on his doorstep, a large genial-looking
man wearing the new uniform of dark green trousers with bloused boots, light
green shirt with a slightly different version of the eagle-and-swastika emblem from
that worn by the NDF, and a green-billed cap with silver sunburst-type crest on it.
“I’m Doctor Clancy Myers. What can I do for you, Officer, uh, Rhinehart?”
asked Clancy, looking at the man’s nametag.
“Actually, it’s Guardsman Rhinehart now,” replied the cop with a smile.
“Don’t worry, I’m still not used to it myself. I’m here to…”
“I know why you’re here,” said Amber, re-appearing at the door with her
coat on and holding her purse. The two kids crowded behind her, staring at the cop
with wide eyes. “I don’t know who denounced me, maybe even someone in my
own family.” (She glared at Clancy.) “But whoever it was, they’re right. I am still a
loyal American, I love and respect people of all colors and religion, and I will
never give in to you murdering racist bastards! No matter what you do to me! So
go ahead, you son of a bitch! Drag me away from my home in front of my
children, and show them just what you are! Take me down to your secret torture
chamber and do your worst! Beat me! Waterboard me! Put your electrodes on my
nipples and fry my tits to teriyaki! Gang rape me! I will tell you nothing! Nothing!”
she shouted, her voice rising to a frenzied scream.
“Oooo-kaaaaay,” said the puzzled cop. “Actually, that’s not why I’m here,
ma’am.” He handed her a bulky manila envelope. “Here’s the deed and property
title to your house.”
“What?” said Amber, surprised.
“The deed to your house,” explained Rhinehart patiently. “Basic Law of
March Seventh. No more mortgage payments for anybody. Your house is all yours,
now. No more property taxes to pay, either, so long as people are actually living
here full time. One of you needs to sign for these papers.”
Amber gaped at him. Clancy stepped forward and took the envelope of
documents, then signed the paper taped to the outside of the envelope. The cop tore
off the top copy, folded it, and put it into his pocket. “Thanks, folks. Hope you
enjoy living in your new debt-free house. I know I like living in mine. You folks
have a good evening.”
“Wait,” said Clancy. “Look, Officer, uh, Guardsman Rhinehart, I have a few
questions. You did us a good turn bringing us these papers, and although we were
just sitting down to dinner, the least we can do is offer you a cup of coffee or a
glass of iced tea. Won’t you come in for a few minutes? Please?” Amber was
glaring icicles at him, but he eased her out of the way and beckoned the policeman
into the house.
“Might as well,” said Rhinehart agreeably. “Coffee sounds good. I’ve only
got a couple more of these to deliver.”
“Georgia, bring a cup of coffee for Guardsman Rhinehart, will you?” Clancy
told his daughter, figuring he’d better not ask his wife. “How do you take it?”
“Black is fine,” said the cop.
“I’m curious about something,” Clancy went on as he ushered the Guard into
his living room. “Not that we don’t appreciate it, but why are the police delivering
these documents? Don’t you have more important things to do?”
“Not really, thank God,” said Rhinehart, seating himself on the sofa at
Clancy’s invitation. “Not much crime these days. Well, hasn’t been much actual
crime in Missoula for some years now, since the NVA ran all the beaners and the
junkies and the drunken Indians out.”
“What about the crime caused by the NVA itself, with their murders and
their bombings and their terrorism?” snapped Amber from the doorway, still
glaring at them.
“Yes, ma’am, there was that,” agreed Rhinehart. “Although we had more
problems with those damned FATPOs, getting drunk and stoned, beating people on
the street, shooting into people’s houses, that kind of thing, not to mention what
they did in their official capacity. Not that the local police were allowed to do
anything about that. Any of us who tried ended up sitting in one of those torture
chambers you mentioned just now, Mrs. Myers. Their federal badges topped ours.
But nowadays everything is as quiet and peaceful as I’ve ever known it. The
people who made trouble simply aren’t around any more.”
“I notice you’re not wearing a sidearm,” pointed out Clancy. “How’s that
working out?”
“Oh, my gun’s in the car. I can get it if it looks like I may need it, but that
hasn’t happened so far. They’re weaning us off ‘em, so to speak, but it looks like
unarmed police in an armed society is turning out to be a good idea,” Rhinehart
replied, taking the cup of coffee from Georgia. “Thanks, young lady.”
“Did you eat all the ice cream?” asked Georgia solemnly.
“What?”
“Mom says the Nazis ate all the ice cream in the stores, and that’s why we
can’t have any for dessert,” said Georgia. She pointed at the eagle and swastika
sewn over the Guard’s buttoned right pocket. “You’re a Nazi. Did you eat all the
ice cream?”
“Uh, no, honey, I didn’t,” said the bemused Rhinehart. “And actually, I’m
not a Nazi. Most Civil Guards aren’t. We were city police or county deputies
before, and we stayed on. That emblem is just part of our uniform, now that we
have a new government, and yeah, it’s a bit strange. I never thought I’d be wearing
a swastika, but a lot of strange things have happened in the past five years. I’ve
met some real Nazis since Longview, true, and they do some unusual things
sometimes, but no, I don’t think they’re running around to grocery stores and
eating all the ice cream so children can’t have any.”
“Ignore her,” said Clancy. “My daughter is ten years old and not four, as she
just reminded us a few minutes ago, and she knows she’s being silly.”
“Peanut is just being a brat to pick at Mom,” said Kevin. “I think the
revolution is cool!”
“You were talking about the new unarmed police force,” said Clancy, trying
to steer the conversation away from both Amber’s confectionary paranoia and
Kevin’s adolescent enthusiasm about the Northwest revolution.
“Oh, yeah,” said Rhinehart as he sipped his coffee. “The way they laid it out
to us in our briefings is that in a truly free society, everyone should have guns
except the police. That way we’re not just another armed gang, we’re
representatives of the law, and if the law and the state itself command respect, then
we don’t need guns to do it for our officers.
“The message does seem to be sinking through, even in a wild and woolly
place like Montana,” he went on. “Oh, the cops still have guns, all right. We
actually have a better firearms course and higher range qualification standard these
days than we did under the old system, and we can get weapons quick enough if
the need arises. We just don’t carry them around with us on routine duties and
community contact work. So far, everyone seems to be getting with the program.
Unless they’re just plain crazy, nobody is going to pull down on a Guard, because
they know who’s standing behind us, and they know who’s standing behind us
won’t f … uh, fool around if you shoot one of us. It’s not like the old days, when
there were zillions of laws and the whole system could be played like a pinball
machine by anybody with enough money. We have very few laws these days, but
the ones we have, you obey. Period, end of story. When folks clearly understand
where the lines are and that you don’t ever cross them, there’s no problem.”
“People having jobs certainly helps,” said Clancy. “My understanding is that
what with the new Labor Service, and with all the regulations and taxes taken off
small businesses, we already have full employment here in Missoula, which was
certainly not the case a year ago. Kevin has an after-school job now, and other
business people downtown keep trying to lure him away with better offers.”
“Mr. Majeski is already paying me in the new Northwest credits,” said
Kevin, holding up a red five-credit note bearing Melanie Young’s image, modified
from its original pink by the Ministry of Finance.
“Yeah, the Guard is getting paid in credits now as well, even though the
official transition period doesn’t start until July the first,” said Rhinehart. “The new
mayor was talking in the city council last night about how Missoula is going to
petition the Bureau of Race and Resettlement in Olympia to steer a lot more of
these refugees from the States out here, instead of Portland and Seattle and the I-5
corridor, because with the old factories re-opening and new ones on the drawing
board, we actually have a labor shortage. You’re right, Dr. Myers. With no
minorities and full employment, crime figures disappear. Sure, in any society
you’re going to get a small element of people who are too lazy to work, or who are
weak in the head, or just plain predatory. That will happen here, but when it does
we’ll deal with it, and we have a lot more latitude to do so now. Since we’re no
longer locking people up for having a couple of joints, we can concentrate on more
serious stuff, like what’s left of the meth trade, which isn’t much.”
“How on earth did you ever clean that up?” asked Clancy curiously. “Meth
was everywhere in Missoula. I used to be afraid to go certain places with my
family because of all the hopheads.”
“First time we catch anybody with meth or rock, we take ‘em down to the
station and beat the crap out of ‘em,” said Rhinehart happily. “We figure a lot of
people just haven’t wrapped their minds around the fact that things have changed.
Then we tell them that the second time we catch ‘em, we’re going to take them up
into the mountains, dig a hole, and leave ‘em in it. So far, we haven’t had to do
that. For one thing, the market has dried up, since almost all the remaining junkies
ran off when the NDF marched in. You’d be amazed how quick people acquire a
whole new attitude, when they know some lawyer in a thousand-dollar suit isn’t
going to help them play games with the system for a year and then get them off
with probation. Of course, there are no more lawyers any more, and I can tell you
for sure that every cop is over the moon about that.”
“And you think this is right?” demanded Amber from the doorway where
she stood. “A totalitarian state denying accused persons legal representation?
Assaulting and threatening substance abusers and denying them due process?”
“I’m no big legal scholar or philosopher, ma’am,” said Rhinehart with a
shrug. “All I know is that this way works, and the old way didn’t. I know that
arrests are way down for everything from drugs to burglary to domestic violence. I
know that with no blacks or browns, there’s almost nobody ever in our jail any
more. I know we don’t need half as many police as we did before the revolution,
and I know everybody in the community is a lot safer. The old system sounded
good in theory, but in practice, it sucked. The new way is better, and that’s a fact.
Well, thanks for the coffee, folks, but I need to get going.”
Clancy escorted the cop out the door and down to his patrol car. “Look,
Rhinehart, I really did want to talk to you about something,” he said. “You heard
what my wife said when she opened the door. She was a lifelong Democrat and a
Hillary Clinton supporter before the revolution, and she has a tendency to kind
of—overreact these days. She really isn’t any kind of threat to the new
government, her liberalism is just kind of a habit I know she needs to break. She
really did think you were coming to take her away just now, and I know it happens,
because some friends of ours have, ah, disappeared.”
“Yeah, it happens,” agreed Rhinehart grimly. “Nothing we can do about it.
When somebody files a report on one of those missing person cases, it goes to the
new captain, who is a former NVA man. He knows which ones are the political
cases, and he balls it up and throws it in the wastebasket. Although to be fair,
sometimes it’s not a political disappearance in that sense. A lot of the time it’s
people just getting twitchy about something in their past or some run-in they’ve
had with the NDF or something, so they jump in their cars and they cut and run
back east across Interstate 15, back into the United States. Those highways are still
open, you know. All of the border posts and barbed wire and fences and minefields
they’re building are on the U.S. side. The media in both countries are starting to
call it the McCurtain, you know, from McDonald’s, like everything in America
could be called a McSomething or other. The Republic doesn’t want to keep
anybody in who doesn’t want to be here, it’s the United States that wants to keep
people out of the Republic. Anybody who wants to leave the Northwest still can.
The official attitude is good riddance.”
“Amber wanted us to leave, but I think we’re past that, and now that we own
the house I think that will be a definite incentive for her to forget about fleeing,”
said Clancy. “But look, Rhinehart, I have to ask you, please, if you could forget
about Amber’s little outburst when she came to the door, and her attitude just now,
and not report it to anyone who might decide to take it further. She just talks that
way because it was fashionable when she was in college, and she never grew out of
it. But still, if certain people were to overhear her saying some of these things and
it got back to the wrong quarters…”
Rhinehart nodded somberly. “Yeah, there is a downside to this new way of
ours, and that is that the people we’ve all been used to insulting and bad-mouthing
for the past five years, and before that, are now in a position to do something about
it. Looks like what goes around does indeed come around. Nobody ever figured
that these men and women we were taught all our lives to hate and deride would
win, and that someday we’d have to put our asses where our mouths once were.
Liberalism is no longer an affordable luxury. It’s dangerous, and now that it’s
dangerous and the other side of the bread is buttered, there’s a lot fewer liberals
around. Don’t worry, Dr. Myers, I won’t say anything, but you really need to see if
you can get your wife to tone it down in public. I was never NVA, but some of my
new colleagues at the station house were, and she’s lucky it wasn’t one of the new
guys doing this milk run delivering papers tonight.”
“Is it true this Bureau of State Security thing we keep hearing about is in
town now, spying on people and tapping phones and hunting down people opposed
to the new régime?” asked Clancy in a worried voice. “I really need to know. Is my
wife in real danger or is she just being paranoid?”
“Yeah, the revolutionary spooks are around,” admitted Rhinehart. “Nobody
knows where they are, or how to contact them. They’re genuine secret police, in
that sense. I guess my captain would know. He’s that former NVA guy I told you
about. Ironically, we were hunting for him during almost the full five years of the
Trouble. He was the brigade commandant for Missoula County, and we never got
near him. He walked in a few months ago wearing a new Guard uniform and called
us all into the assembly room. ‘My name is A.J. Drones,’ he says. ‘I’m your new
station commander. You boys wanted to get me in this place for years and now I’m
here.’ Shook us up, I admit. He would probably know how to contact BOSS, but
none of us does. None of us has even seen ‘em, but we know they’re around. I
would advise your wife to be a little more circumspect in the future, Dr. Myers.
Hell, a lot more circumspect.”
***
The next day was a Saturday, and Clancy decided it was time finally to take
the bull by the horns and have it out with his wife over her attitude toward the new
government and her risky practice of baiting Missoula’s new top dogs in public.
He decided to send Kevin and Georgia to a movie that evening to give them some
privacy, which was now both physically and morally safe to do, since the streets
were white at night and the theaters were showing virtually nothing made after
1965 or so. Clancy found an old John Wayne flick on at the downtown Paramount,
which was within walking distance, and he figured it was time for his kids to meet
the Duke.
He went into work that morning to grade papers and work on his lecture
notes for the coming week, when his students would be covering the poet William
Blake. The first warning he got that anything was off kilter came at about four
thirty in the afternoon, when Kevin called him from the school track meet. His
mother had failed to pick him up. Puzzled, Clancy drove over and collected Kevin,
then arrived at his home about five o’clock.
He could tell the moment he walked into the house that something was badly
wrong. The place felt empty, and it was. He looked in the garage and saw that the
second SUV, the Range Rover, was missing. He went upstairs and found signs of
hurried packing in the bedroom and in Georgia’s room. He ran downstairs, calling
the names of his wife and his daughter, somehow knowing in one terrifying
moment that he would never hear either of them answer him again.
Clancy Myers found the note taped to the refrigerator, read it, and then he
staggered into his living room and collapsed into a chair. “Dad, what’s going on?”
demanded Kevin. “Where are Mom and Georgie?”
“Your mother has left us,” he told his son. “She is going to live with your
grandmother in Washington, D.C. She says in this letter that I can have you,
because you’ve already been ruined, and you’re nothing but a little Hitler Youth
now. Her own words. But she says she won’t let us ruin Georgia. Ruin Georgia?
Christ in heaven!” Clancy Myers looked at his son, tears streaming down his face.
“That damnable bitch! She took our little girl, Kevin! She took our little girl!”
V. That Toddlin’ Town
(Nine months after Longview)
Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin' town!
Chicago, Chicago, I'll show you around!
-old Frank Sinatra song
Elias Horakova was having a really bad day.
That sweltering July morning he arrived late at his job at the Chicago Tool
and Die Company’s last functioning American plant in Calumet Heights, after a
train commute that had stretched to three hours due to several mechanical
breakdowns, and also due to a dead goat on the tracks from a Santeria ceremony
the night before. Needless to say, the air conditioning on both the local rail and the
El was broken. It hardly ever worked any more.
When Eli finally got to work, he learned from a memo in his mailbox that
the venerable factory was finally closing its doors, and the last jobs were being
shipped to the new plant in Guatemala. Eli took his lunch break in the Moose
Lodge tavern down the street, quaffed one too many Old Style beers, and when he
returned to work, he took a swing at his obnoxious Mexican foreman with a pipe
wrench. For this he was informed that he would lose fifty percent of his severance
package. The company Human Relations Committee also told him they were
notifying the FBI of a possible hatecrime. Then after the endless trip home on the
oven-like trains, Eli had arrived at his home in Cicero to find a dead nigger lying in
his living room.
The dead man was still bleeding. He wore a filthy tank top, an empty holster
on his hip, jeans and boots, and on his coal-black head was glued the remains of a
bright multi-colored wool toboggan cap that was soaked in blood and brain matter.
Horakova’s 16-year-old son Eddie, a chunky tow-headed youth whose arms and
hands were already as big and muscular as his father’s, was sitting on the couch,
still holding the old .45-caliber Colt automatic he had used to shoot the huge
congoid. A nine-millimeter Glock automatic that Eli had never seen before was
lying on the coffee table. “Jesus Christ! Eddie? What the fuck happened?” croaked
Elias, his throat suddenly bone-dry.
“It’s that Jamaican badass Rico Tubbs,” Eddie said in a toneless voice. “He
was gonna take Millie to the Center. For questioning, he said.”
“Mother of God!” cried Eli in horror. Everyone in Chicago knew what such
questioning in a Neighborhood Watch clubhouse would have entailed for a 13year-old white girl. “Where’s Millie? Is she all right?” he demanded.
“She’s in her room,” said Eddie. “I already laid it all out for her, Dad. She
was in her room the whole day, on her computer, or listening to music with her
headphones on, and she didn’t see or hear nothing. No matter what the cops do or
say to her, she didn’t see or hear nothing. She understands. She won’t break, Dad.
This is all on me. I won’t let them involve her.”
“It’s not the cops I’m worried about, it’s Rico’s nigger buddies down at the
Neighborhood Watch,” said Eli, sitting down in an armchair and shakily lighting a
cigarette. “Tell me what happened, Ed.”
“It was maybe half an hour ago. Rico came in the door…”
“Did he break in?” interrupted Eli.
“No, he used his house key, the one the city made us give to the Watch,” his
son told him.
“Did he have any papers on him about Millie, about the family? Anything
from the FBI or the Human Relations Commission?”
“Nah,” said Eddie. “He just walked in. Millie and me were sitting here
watching TV. Rico walks over and grabs Millie by the arm. He says, ‘You be
coming wit me, little mama. We got some questions for you down at de Sen-tair,’
you know that crappy Jamaican accent he had. He didn’t even look at me. He
didn’t care I was there. I was just a white boy, what was I gonna do? But I knew
what I was gonna do, Dad. I didn’t say nothing. I just got up and went into your
bedroom and got the gun from your stash, jacked in a round like you showed me
that time we went shooting down in the Forest Preserves, and I walked back in
here. Millie was kicking and screaming, and Rico was laughing as he dragged her
out the door. I shot him once in the chest and put him down. He was lying there
gasping like a fish out of water, clawing at his holster for his gun. I leaned over and
took the gun. That’s it on the table there. Then I put the muzzle right onto his teeth
and I pulled the trigger again. Outfit style, like Stash says they used to do back in
the day. I just did what I hadda do, Dad.”
“I know, son,” said his father, his heart breaking. “Where’s your mother?
Does she know?”
“No. Mom’s still at work. Tommy’s still at day care. Mom is picking him up
on her way home.”
“What about Stash?”
“He wheeled himself into the room when he heard the yelling and screaming
and the shots. He’s out in the garage now. He said he was getting some stuff we’re
gonna need.”
“What stuff?” asked Eddie’s father, still trying to take it all in.
“Dis stuff,” said Eli’s father Stanislas, a lean and wiry old man in his
seventies, as he rolled his wheelchair into the living room. On his lap were several
hacksaws and a roll of black garbage bags. “I’m glad you’re home, Eli, because it’s
gonna take two of you to get dis buck’s clothes off and get him into de bathtub.
Den you gotta cut him up. We put de pieces in dese garbage bags, we weigh de
bags down wit bricks or scrap iron, and tonight you and Eddie take de van, and you
toss de bags into de lake. Throw each one in at a different place.”
It was a testament to the realities of life in the United States, and Chicago in
particular, that the idea of calling the police was so foolish it never even occurred
to Eli to suggest it. His son had raised his hand against a man with a black skin; in
Chelsea Clinton’s America, his life was now over. “They’re gonna come looking
for him,” said Eli hopelessly, gesturing toward the black carcass on the floor.
“There’s what? Three white homes left on Kildare Avenue, and we’re the only
family with a girl? If the brothers didn’t know where he was going, they’ll figure it
out soon enough.”
“Dat’s why we have to hurry and get dis cleaned up,” said Stash. “Once we
get de cutting done, you guys have to dump de bags and de girls will have to scrub
down every inch of dis room. If de real cops get involved, dey might use dose
luminol lights for bloodstains, but we’ll tell ‘em you came home drunk and you
knocked Lorna around a few nights ago.”
“I’ve never laid a hand on Lorna!” protested Eli angrily. “I’m not a wifebeater!” Not like you, he thought silently.
“Dey don’t know dat,” said Stash evenly.
“Did you ever cut up a body before, Grandad?” asked Eddie.
“I doubt it,” snarled Eli. “Eddie, I thought you’d figured out by now that all
those Outfit stories were bullshit. Your grandfather spent forty years working like a
dog in the same place I just got laid off from today. If he was mobbed up, we
wouldn’t be living in a three-bedroom bungalow in Cicero with a half-milliondollar mortgage, he wouldn’t be sleeping on a roll-out sofa bed in the garage, and
you wouldn’t be sharing a room with your brother.”
“Sorry to hear de plant’s closing down, saw dat comin’ a long time ago, but
we got other problems to deal wit now,” said Stanislas. “Eli, you get his head and
Eddie, you get his feet. Take him into de bathroom, strip him, and I’ll walk you
through it while I watch from the doorway. Eddie, give me de gun.”
“Why?” asked Eddie.
“Because if anybody walks in dat front door while we’re doin’ dis besides
your mother, I’m gonna kill him, and dat’s no bullshit.”
Eli’s wife Lorna, a faded blond woman with a work-worn face, arrived home
half an hour later with five-year-old Tommy. She saw what her husband and son
were doing in the bathroom, and went into hysterics. Eli managed to get her
calmed down after another half hour. Then he sent the little boy into Millie’s room,
telling a white-faced Millie to play a computer game with him and keep him in
there, while Lorna got busy with the Ajax, a scrub brush, and a mop. Then Eli and
his son went on with their gruesome task while old Stanislas offered helpful
supervisory suggestions that made Eli wonder if his long-held, skeptical estimation
of his father’s alleged criminal past might need re-thinking. By nine o’clock that
night, the bathtub was piled with doubled black garbage bags, firmly closed with
plastic ties, and Lorna had managed to whip up a big pot of macaroni and cheese,
which she served as supper along with a plate of buttered slices of cheap white
bread. This was how the family always ate anyway, since the Food Stamps
program had gone bankrupt years before. Every dime she and her husband earned
had to go for the house mortgage and her father-in-law’s twice-weekly kidney
dialysis treatments; food was a necessity of life that had to be provided as cheaply
as possible.
There were no recriminations at the dinner table. This was America, these
were poor white people who knew the score, and the only concern now was to save
Eddie’s life. “I know what I gotta do,” said Eddie soberly. “Mom, Dad, give me
some money, as much as you got on you, and I’ll leave town. After we get rid of
the bags, Dad, take me up the Tollway as far as Interstate 90, and drop me off at
some truck stop. I’ll hitch from there. I can make it to Wyoming in three or four
days if I’m lucky, and then I’ll sneak across the border into the Northwest
Republic.”
“But when will you come back?” asked his sister Milada, a thin girl with
long blond hair who was on the verge of tears.
“I can’t ever come back, Millie,” said the boy. “I’m sorry it played out like
this, I’m sorry I jammed the family up like this, but what’s done is done.”
“There has to be some other way!” moaned Lorna.
“There isn’t,” said Eli harshly. “He’ll be tried as an adult in one of those
goddamned new Hate Courts, and he’ll get life in prison, although in his case that
won’t be long since we all know what happens to teenaged white boys in Joliet.”
“What would happen?” asked Millie.
“I won’t last a week,” explained Eddie brutally. “The first time the niggers
try to fuck me in the shower I’ll fight back, and they’ll stab me to death with their
shivs.”
No one questioned what Eddie said. Life for white people in blue-collar
Chicago was grim, and even Millie was old enough to know what he was talking
about. Little Tommy simply stared. He knew something bad was happening, but he
didn’t cry; already he understood by some mental and emotional osmosis from the
others that in this world, his family was surrounded by enemies, and he must not
show weakness. “We all have to go,” said Eli. “They’ll be coming after all of us
now, because of that Parental Responsibility Act, and they’ll give Millie and
Tommy to It Takes a Village to be sold. Hell, might as well make a break for it,
just on general principles. I ain’t got no job any more, and at my age I ain’t getting
another job. I been thinking about it for a while.”
“Maybe it will be all right,” ventured Lorna. “The angels watched over
Millie and Eddie this afternoon, maybe they’ll keep on watching over us.” White
people in America dealt with the unbearable strain and tension of life surrounded
by a slowly rising sea of mud in many ways. In Lorna’s case, it was through her
Catholic faith, and a resolute belief in the existence of angels on earth who would
somehow make everything work out in the end. She had a shelf full of books and a
rack of video discs, all on the subject of angels. No one else in the family believed
in them, and no one was so cruel as to argue with her on the subject. “But we can’t
all go,” Lorna went on “What about Stash? He’s supposed to go for dialysis
tomorrow. And besides, it’s against the law to move to any of the Northwestern
states now. We’ll be arrested at the state line.”
“That’s why it has to be just me, Mom,” said Eddie. “I broke the law when I
shot that ape, but you guys haven’t yet, unless you shelter me. That’s why I gotta
leave on my own, so I don’t get you guys into more trouble.”
“I don’t give a damn about the law of this goddamned country no more,”
said Eli. “Two tours in Iraq, and what did this country ever give me in return? I got
a piece of shrapnel in my leg that still hurts like hell, but the goddamned VA
doctors won’t take it out because it costs too much. There’s no more Medicare or
any kind of help for my father. Neither of you kids are learning a damned thing in
school, and if your mother and I didn’t stand over you and make you learn on the
computer every night, neither of you would even know how to read and write!
Now I got no job, because those Jews on the board of directors sent it to some
shithole in Guatemala where they’ll train some Indian to push the buttons on the
robot that actually does what I used to do. Nothing but niggers and Mexicans
everywhere like a plague of goddamned locusts! Now they do this to my family?
That nigger was probably getting paid more by the city for swaggering around the
neighborhood with his gun and molesting any white woman he met than I was
getting paid at the CT&D. He comes into my home and expects to rape my
daughter just for shits and giggles, my son defends her, and now he’s gonna get
thrown away like a piece of garbage? To hell with the law and to hell with
America! I say we all go Northwest!”
“But what about Stash’s dialysis?” asked Lorna.
“De answer is simple,” said Stanislas. “You guys go Northwest. You go
tonight. You can’t take me, and you know it. I’m stuck in dis chair, I can’t even
take a shit by myself, and I gotta get hooked up to dat goddamned machine in de
hospital every three or four days. You’re gonna have to run de border, where de
TV says dey got army and Marines and special police units setting up barbed wire
and minefields because so many white people want out of this latrine. You can’t be
lugging me along while you’re cutting through barbed wire and dodging machine
gun nests, and you can’t push me across a minefield in dis chair.”
“And what about our friend in the bathtub?” asked Eli.
“Before you go, stuff de garbage bags in de crawl space under de house,”
said Stash. “When de Neighborhood Watch shows up looking for deir head nigger
in charge, I’ll just clam up and tell ‘em I don’t know nuthin’. When Tubbsy starts
getting ripe and people notice de smell, sure, dey’ll find him, but I still don’t know
nuthin’. I mean, like I killed him and stuffed him under de house? In dis chair?
Yeah, dey’ll figure out what happened, but you’ll be long gone.”
“Then they’ll just kill you,” said Eli. “They’ll beat you to death or drag you
out into the street and run over you with their patrol SUVs like they did poor old
Frank Metesky back in October when he hung blue, white and green streamers on
his porch.”
“I’ll talk ‘em out of it,” said Stanislas. “I can act like a real dumb and pitiful
old bohunk when I want to.”
“And suppose you managed to do that, what will happen to you then,
Stash?” asked Lorna. “Who will take care of you?”
“I still got some friends down at de precinct,” said the old man. In
Chicagoese, he was referring to the Democratic Party precinct house, not the police
precinct. “Dere’s still a few old bohunks down there who can get me a check of
some kind, and if not, I’ll go into a nursing home.”
“You’re not going into a nursing home,” said Eli. “Especially not the ones
for indigent old white people in this city, where you’ll be starved and beaten by the
Filipino and Nigerian orderlies, and then one night one of them will cut your throat
for your IV. I’m not leaving you in a place like that while we run away, Stash.” He
sighed. “Eddie’s right. He has to try and make it on his own. We’ll dump the bags
in the lake, and then I’ll drop him off up where I-90 begins. When the
Neighborhood Watch comes looking, Eddie just ran away, and none of us knows
anything. If they honestly don’t know what Tubbs was up to for his entertainment
this afternoon, maybe we can get them to believe us. Eddie, go get dressed for the
road. I got about forty dollars on me, I think.”
“I’ve got twenty or thirty,” said Lorna, sniffling.
“I have about a hundred dollars in my piggy bank,” said Millie, her eyes
tearing.
“Aw, Millie, for Christ’s sake, you been saving that since you were eight,”
said Eddie with a sad laugh. “I don’t need your money.”
“You saved me from that nigger,” said Millie, weeping openly now. “I know
what he was going to do to me. I ain’t a stupid kid any more. Now you have to go
away forever because of me. I can at least give you my pig.”
“Take me out to de garage and let’s give ‘em some time,” said old Stash to
his son. Eli and Eddie had built a ramp, and Stanislas could get back to his roll-upbed sofa in the garage well enough on his own, but Eli wheeled him out anyway.
When they got out to Stash’s hootch he’d made for himself, he said, “Eli, dis is
bullshit. You can’t break up de family like dis. All of yez gotta make a run for it,
get to de Northwest. Leave me. Don’t worry, I’ll be okay. Pack your shit, and take
it on de arches. Tonight.”
“Leaving you behind would break up the family,” said Eli, “You’re right.
You can’t run a border full of armed guards and land mines in a wheelchair, and
that doesn’t even take into account your bum kidneys and your dialysis. Eddie’s
young, he’s smart, and I’ve taught him how to work with his hands, carpentry,
electrical, plumbing, not to mention how to keep that piece of crap van running.
Hell, he’s handier around the house than I am. He can take care of himself and
make a living in Seattle or someplace like that. You can’t. We can’t take you, and
I’m not leaving you, so this is the only way. Maybe if all of us white people had
stood up to the government like those Jerry Rebs in the Northwest did, things
would be different, but we played it safe and stayed on our bellies, and things ain’t
different. So that’s the sitch, and we’ll deal with it.”
“Even if you can somehow talk your way out of it when dose niggers come
nosing around, you got no job any more, and from what you said at dinner de
goddamned FBI may be coming after you for hatecrime as well,” said Stash.
“This is our home. Grandpa and grandma came to this country as DPs and
spent twelve years working their fingers to the bone, grandpa swinging a pick and
shovel and grandma waiting tables and sewing in a Jew sweatshop to buy this
house. You grew up here and so did I, and now so have Eddie and Millie. Eddie
has to leave now, but you don’t, and the rest of us don’t,” said Eli, desperately
trying to convince himself.
“Bird turd!” snarled Stash. “Why do you think my parents came here after
World War Two? Dey was one step ahead of de fucking Communists back in
Czechoslovakia, is why. Dey was done dere, and now we’re done here, Eli. Dese
things happen every few generations. All of yez need to accept what’s happened
and clear out. Leave me. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re my father. I’m not running away and leaving you behind to face the
music,” said Eli stubbornly.
“You know damned well I was a lousy father, just like I was a lousy
wiseguy,” said Stanislas.
“Well, if you’d been a better wiseguy, maybe we’d be living in a nice suburb
now and we wouldn’t be in this shit,” said Eli bitterly. “Okay, let’s say for a
moment that I believe you. If you really were with Giancana back in the day, why
didn’t you stick with it?”
“Your mother,” said Stanislas with a sigh. “Just after you was born, I got
caught up in one of dose big Crime Commission sweeps dey used to pull every few
years, all de politicians and cops downtown standing in front of de TV cameras and
telling everybody how dey was gonna shut down de Outfit and clean up Chicago.
Yeah, like dat’s ever gonna happen. Half of ‘em were on Accardo or Momo
Giancana’s pad even while dey were talkin’ dat crap. I was a little fish, and my
charges were all petty bullshit beefs, running a couple of handbooks, receiving,
nothin’ I couldn’t beat, and eventually I did.
“But for de only time in her life, your mother put her foot down. She said
you wasn’t gonna grow up never seeing your old man except on visiting day. She
didn’t care what I did when I was home, so long as I was home every night,
otherwise she was gone and so were you. I knew she meant it, so I went to my
precinct captain and I got a union card and a job at CT&D. So instead of seeing me
only on visiting day, you got to see me home every night, usually drunk and
whaling on your mother or you or your brothers, taking it out on you because I was
working a drill press instead of running numbers and hustling and driving a new
Caddy every year.” Stash looked up at him. “Eli, I was a rotten son of a bitch. I’m
damned if I know why you let me live here after de way I acted all dose years. You
don’t owe me nuthin’, rather de reverse. You take your family, and you get in dat
van and you head Northwest, before Rico Tubbs’ homeys come knocking on de
door, which could happen any minute now if you don’t move your ass.”
“I told you, you’re my father,” said Eli. “It’s not about what kind of man you
were, it’s about what kind of man I am. I’m not leaving you behind.”
He walked heavily back into the house. Lorna and Millie were sitting on the
sofa crying and hugging Eddie. In all the stress and turmoil of the day, Eli had
forgotten that Stash still had the .45. He was just nerving himself up to tell Eddie
and the women that it was time, that Eddie needed to say his goodbyes and they
needed to get the van loaded with the macabre black bags and get moving, when
they all heard the gunshot. Lorna screamed. “Stay here!” Eli ordered them, and he
ran into the garage.
“Stan the Man” Horakova had performed one last hit, or possibly his first, on
himself. Eli would never know. His father’s bloodied head was thrown back in the
wheelchair, and the wall and ceiling of the garage was covered in dripping blood
and gray matter. The gun lay on the concrete floor beneath the chair. There was
still a lot of stuff left in the room from the days when it had been an actual garage,
one of them being a can of vermilion spray paint. Old Stash had taken the can and
spray-painted one word on the back of the garage door: “GO.”
***
The Horakova family pulled out of the driveway of the house on Kildare
Avenue in the first thin light of dawn. They were driving a battered white van that
was the last remaining relic from Eli’s attempt, some years before, to start his own
part-time electrical contracting business using the umpteenth re-finance on the
house mortgage. Then Stash’s kidneys had gone south and most of the capital went
into keeping the old man alive.
The business had spluttered along for two years and then been shut down by
the federal government for failure to meet OSHA standards, although that was just
an excuse. It had long been the policy of the U.S. government to destroy any white
entrepreneurial endeavor wherever it raised its head, either through regulation or
taxation. The American ruling élite disliked and distrusted self-employed white
people. They wanted everybody in the country working for a paycheck that could
be cut off, if it ever became necessary to get a handle on someone. The two parties
differed only on tactical details, not in their commitment to full economic control
of the white population. Republicans wanted that paycheck to come from a large
multinational corporation, whereas Democrats preferred that it come from the
government. Democracy in America had long since been reduced to a matter of
who controlled the patronage. It was Chicago writ large.
Eli carefully packed the van with the things he thought they would need,
mostly clothes and the tools he and Eddie would need to earn a living in the new
land. The first stop was an automated teller machine at the far end of Kildare
Avenue, where Eli drew out $220 of the $227.15 in his and Lorna’s joint account
in $20 bills, the family’s entire worldly wealth. With what they had on them, as
well as the contents of Millie’s pig, they had almost four hundred dollars, which
would not be enough even for gas. But Eli had a large jerry can of gasoline he kept
for emergencies, and this qualified. He also packed a siphon hose. “If we run dry
we’ll just steal some gas,” he told them. “Preferably from some Jew’s Cadillac.”
They headed northward on Interstate 90. Traffic wasn’t too bad, and they
were past Rockford and well into Wisconsin by noon. Eli did the driving. The
others took turns beside him in the passenger seat so they could get some air; little
Tommy sat on Lorna’s lap, while the others sat in the back as best they could on
the heaps of clothing and boxes of stuff they had packed. They watched the green
forested landscape along the interstate go by in silence. They were all exhausted,
no one had gotten any sleep, and the events of the past 24 catastrophic hours were
finally starting to sink in.
Eli’s father, the children’s grandfather, was dead. Their home, the only home
Eli himself and the children had ever known, had been torn from them in the blink
of an eye because of a nigger’s casual lust for a little white girl. They had known
others who had defied the politically correct system, and those others had paid the
price. Now it was the Horakovas’ turn. Their names had been drawn out of the
Mad Hatter’s topper in the insane lottery of life under political correctness, and
now they were to be hurled onto the burning altar of Moloch, god of equality and
diversity, like so many others during the past century. No mercy, no appeal, just
down the tubes. It was a quintessential American experience.
Once they got past Madison, Eli pulled off at a rest stop. The stop itself was
long closed, due to some long-forgotten round of state or federal budgets cuts, but
people still used it anyway to rest and to dump their garbage in a large landfill pit
someone had dug out of the ground. There were several other vehicles pulled over
in the parking area, all of them white motorists, fortunately. Eli was in no mood to
deal with nigger or Mexican bullshit at the moment. The way he felt right now, if
any of them approached him to beg or Mau Mau or steal, Eli probably would put a
bullet in the shitskin’s head from the .45 he kept in the small of his back. The gun
had killed twice in the past 24 hours and Eli no longer cared if it killed again, just
so long as it killed someone with dark skin. He had finally been pushed beyond the
point of caring.
The toilets and sinks were no longer functioning in the restrooms, which
were supposed to be locked, but someone had broken down the doors, and people
had been using the facilities anyway. In the summer heat, the stench inside was so
powerful that the family all went off into the woods to relieve themselves. Then
they had a breakfast of sorts, consisting of whatever immediately comestible items
Lorna had found in their kitchen cupboard back in Cicero. This included several
candy bars, a can of dried apricots, half a can of dried plums, several cans of
Vienna sausages, and some cold pop-tarts washed down with cans of soda. “Okay,
it’s time we all got some rest,” decreed Eli. “The women and Tommy make
themselves a bed in the back as best they can, Eddie and me will sleep in the front.
It’s probably best we do most of our traveling at night anyway.”
They pulled into the most removed parking area in the rest stop and settled
down for a few hours of restive, disturbed sleep. They were all awake by six p.m.,
and five-year-old Tommy was finally starting to get cranky. Millie kept him quiet
by sharing a hand-held video game. Eli, Eddie, and Lorna looked at the road map
of the United States he had brought, spread out on the side of the van.
“We need to make our decision on where to try and break through the
border,” said Eli. “We’re coming up to the fork in the interstates.”
“Wyoming is the closest,” said Lorna.
“Hey, maybe Dad and I can become cowboys,” suggested Eddie with a faint
smile on his lips.
“Agreed,” said Elias with a nod. “Wyoming is the closest, but for that very
reason it will probably be more closely watched by the military and the security
agencies, since I-90 is the quickest route there from the Midwest. If we take I-90
and head west, we’ll go through South Dakota’s Black Hills country and hit the
Wyoming state line, or what used to be the state line, in about 20 hours, depending
on traffic, which would be great if we were tourists on vacation and we were
taking the scenic route. But we’re not, we’re refugees running for our lives.
Wyoming is technically one of the states handed over to the Northwest Republic
by the Longview Treaty, yeah, but from what I can remember from the TV and
internet news, it’s still pretty wild and woolly out there, with some fighting still
going on between the new white government and American forces, and also some
of the local people who want to stick with the United States. We don’t need to go
driving right into a war zone where we might get shot at from all sides. Also, I
drove down 90 once, and I remember those badlands out there are really barren. I
mean it’s like you’re on the fucking moon. We might run out of gas a hundred
miles from the nearest help.”
“So where, then?” asked Eddie.
Eli pointed to the map. “If we head north from here and we get onto I-94
west, we’ll go through North Dakota and eastern Montana until we get to West
Montana, or whatever the Northwest Republic calls it now it’s their part of the
state. There are some cities we’ll have to go around, Fargo, Bismarck, Billings and
Bozeman, and that might get a bit hairy with cops watching, but it also means we
can get gas there and maybe a little food. The trouble is that at some point, most
likely around Bozeman, the troops and cops will start getting really thick, and we’ll
need to get off the interstate and try taking the back roads around any roadblocks.
That’s where it will start getting funky. But the best aspect of using the northern
route is that unlike Wyoming, in Montana there’s a clear border, Interstate 15. I
don’t know if the highway itself is still being used by traffic at all, but once we’re
on the western side of it, we’re in the Republic and home free. It’s a finish line in
this race for our lives, something we can shoot for.”
“Let’s go north and try for Montana, then,” said Lorna. “I know the angels
will help us, but we should also help ourselves as much as we can.”
Before sunset, they pulled off at one exit and found a roadside market, one
of the many unofficial bazaars that had sprung up across the United States in the
past few years that paid protection to assorted cops and local authorities to be
allowed to trade without licensing or regulation. Most of these markets were run by
Middle Easterners, and they specialized in selling discontinued stock, or big box
discounts, or whatever the current term was for stolen goods, especially cheap
processed and canned food items, since food had become so expensive. The
Horakovas were able to replenish their supply of Vienna sausages, beans, several
boxes of crackers, and a block of processed cheese food one of the dusky Hindu
traders had in an ice cooler. At Eddie’s recommendation, Eli also bought a cheap
burner cell phone that had the capacity to receive netcasts from CNN, Fox, and the
major news networks. All the Horakovas had their own phones, but Eli had
forbidden their use and removed their circuit cards with the federally mandated
built-in GPS microchip, lest they be used by the Chicago police or the FBI to track
them down. Then they were back on the road.
They cut their available funds almost in half filling the van’s gas tank in St.
Paul. They were now about eleven hundred miles from Butte, Montana, a town
split down the middle by Interstate 15. “In theory we should be able to get one
more fill-up and make it,” said Eli. “We could, if we were just driving down the
interstate, like you could before all the trouble. Technically speaking, the
Northwest Republic begins at Exit 227, where I-90 runs into 15. But there’s no
way they’re going to just let us pull off and check into the nearest HoJo’s.”
Then began the long trip down I-94 through the darkness, through
Minnesota and then across the broad, flat expanse of North Dakota. The silence in
the van was broken only by the newscasts that Eddie found on the new disposable
cell phone and put on speaker. He would try the Chicago internet stations for a
while, to see if there was any news about what they had left behind in the house on
Kildare Avenue, and then he would scan for news items or anything to do with
border conditions ahead. “As near as I can tell from the news, the barbed wire and
the barriers and the minefields are all on the American side, so once we actually
get into Northwest territory we should be safe,” said Eddie.
“After Billings we have to get off the interstate and find a way to get to I-15
by back roads, at night, and then cross over without being detected,” Eli said.
The Horakovas noticed there were a lot of headlights all around them,
almost all of them heading west. “I wonder how many of the people in these other
cars are doing like we’re doing and trying to get into the Northwest Republic?”
asked Eddie.
“Quite a few of them, I suspect,” replied Eli.
“Maybe we should all form a wagon train together like the pioneers did back
in the old days,” suggested Eddie.
“That’s not a good idea,” said Eli. “Those assholes in D.C. admit they’re
monitoring traffic on the interstate from satellites in space, and at some point down
the line here, the cops and the military are going to start straining out anybody they
think might be trying to leave the joys of the so-called greatest nation on earth for
someplace where niggers don’t come into your house and try to drag your daughter
away. We have to get as close as we can to the border and find a place where we
can cross without being noticed. Eddie, ride the internet on that thing, and see if
you can get some idea of what’s going on in the border area, what kind of trouble
we might be running into.”
Finally, as the dawn broke, they crossed the state line into the plains of
eastern Montana. Eddie and Millie and Lorna stared out the windows of the van at
the vastness of the land under the rising sun; they had never been farther out of the
city than the Forest Preserves, and they had never even imagined that such a huge
amount of space uncluttered by brick or asphalt or concrete could even exist. “It’s
all empty,” whispered Millie, staring out the back window of the van. “How are we
going to find the Northwest Republic in all this?”
“Imagine what it was like a hundred-and-fifty years ago when the first
pioneers were walking across these plains with Conestoga wagons pulled by mules
and oxen,” said her father. “A lot of white people have made this trip before us,
Millie. We should have made it ourselves, long before we were forced to. Then we
wouldn’t have to be doing it now, like this, on the run and with only the shirts on
our backs. I remember once, many years ago, I looked at one of the old Party web
sites and that old guy was trying to tell people just that. I didn’t listen then. I wish
to hell I had.”
Their first problem came that afternoon outside Billings, when they were
pulled over by a Montana State Highway Patrol officer. Eli looked up and saw the
flashing LED lights in his side mirror. He pulled over to the shoulder of the
interstate. A tall white state trooper, about 30 years old, got out of the unit and
walked up to the driver’s side of the van. His name tag read Cornwell. “License
and registration, please,” he demanded laconically.
Eli produced them; fortunately, the registration on the van was up to date.
“What’s the problem, officer?” he asked, acutely aware of the cold metal of the .45
pressing into his back underneath his shirt.
“Where are you headed, Mr. Horakova?” asked Trooper Cornwell. To Eli’s
surprise he pronounced the family name correctly, the first time.
“We’re on vacation,” said Eli. “We’re going to get on I-90 going south at
Billings and drive down to the Little Big Horn to see the monument there. Where
Custer fought the Indians. Pardon me, the Native Americans.”
“I’ve heard of it, yes,” replied the highway patrolman in a dry tone. “I’m just
going to issue you a warning this time, Mr. Horakova.”
“A warning for what?” asked Eli. “You still haven’t told me what law I’m
breaking, officer.”
“The law of self-preservation,” said Cornwell. “My warning to you is to quit
being so fucking stupid, because you’re going to get yourself and your family
killed. You’ve got what looks like everything you own packed in this vehicle, and
all of you have that blank poker face that any cop learns to recognize in his rookie
year, the face that’s a dead giveaway that you’re up to something, and we both
know what. You’re not going down 90 East to commune with the spirit of Custer.
You’re going to get on 90 West, but you’ll never make it. A few miles down from
here, just after Billings, is where the army and the FATPO checkpoints begin, and
if you try a moronic story like that with some of those men, they will drag you all
out of the vehicle and shoot you through the head, including the little boy. It’s
happened before, and there is not one damned thing the Patrol or anyone else can
do about it. Actually, by this time next week, anyone using any interstate highway
at all in eastern Montana will need a permit. They can enter and exit only through
checkpoints, and they have to file a trip itinerary with somebody, don’t know who
yet. New regulation from the highway czar in Washington, D.C. The government
of the United States is a wounded animal, Horakova, the most dangerous in the
world. My warning to you is to turn around and head back to Chicago.”
Something made Eli decide to take a chance, or maybe he had just run as far
as he was inclined to run. “We can’t go back,” he told the state trooper in a level
voice. “Not ever.”
“Why not?” asked the cop.
Eli jerked his head toward the back of the van where the kids were hunkered.
“That’s my son, Eddie. He’s sixteen. That’s my daughter, Millie. She’s thirteen.
Two days ago, a nigger carrying a gun and a semi-official badge from the Cicero
Neighborhood Watch walked into my home and tried to take Millie by force down
to their clubhouse for a little rape and sodomy session. Eddie shot him dead.
Originally the idea was for Eddie to try and make it Northwest on his own. My
father was crippled, confined to a wheelchair, and suffering from massive kidney
failure treatable only through dialysis, so we couldn’t bring him with us, and I
refused to leave him there at the mercy of those black and brown animals. That
night, my father stuck a gun into his mouth and blew his own brains out. He did it
to lighten our load, so all of us could make this trip together. We’re not going back,
Mr. Cornwell. Now do whatever the fuck you think you gotta do.” Eli didn’t
mention that he had the .45 and Eddie was packing Rico Tubbs’ Glock. He figured
the cop could fill in the blanks for himself.
The trooper looked at the ground and sighed. “Jesus!” After a while, he
looked up. “Okay, listen good, because I’m only going to say this once. You folks
have to get off the interstate. I mean it; do not try to get past a checkpoint looking
like you do. They will read you like a book. The McCurtain isn’t just a fence, it’s a
whole network of obstacles and checkpoints and surveillance and patrols covering
hundreds of square miles on this side of Interstate 15, and you’re about to run right
into it. Last I heard, the first FATPO roadblock is around Park City somewhere.
You need to get out of Billings and take the northbound exit at Laurel. From there
take County road five thirty-two up to Broadview, then get on state Highway Three
going north. Then when it runs into Highway Twelve, head west. There are still a
lot of patrols and helicopter surveillance even on Twelve, but it’s a big country out
there. On the interstate you have no chance at all.”
“We got a pretty good map,” said Eli. “We’ll find our way.”
“Twelve will take you right into Helena, or the American half of Helena, but
don’t do that,” Cornwell told them. “The American sectors of Helena and Butte are
crawling with Fatties, military police, FBI, and Blackwater contractors that the
Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have hired as
bounty hunters to stop white people from entering the Republic. A lot of people
have been killed in the towns, trying to climb over the barbed wire or tunnel under
the fence to get into the NAR sector. The Blackwater goons and the FATPO both
just shoot to kill. The FBI likes to arrest refugees so they can torture them,
waterboarding and the electric chair and the bath of flies, the whole nine yards. For
God’s sake, don’t let the Bureau catch you. They’ll make your kids watch. They
have been publicly defeated and humiliated by white men, and they are out of their
minds with rage and hate. If you absolutely must surrender to anyone, try to make
it local police or the MPs, although some of them are just as bad. Lotta Mexicans.
Your best bet is to get a few miles away from Helena in either direction. Helena’s
smaller and there’s fewer hostiles in that area. Then find some back road that will
get you right up to the fence along the American side of I-15. You’ll have to cut
through, but be careful. Some sections of the fence are electrified now.”
“They’ve got the whole interstate fenced off?” asked Eli.
“Yeah,” said Trooper Cornwell in disgust. “For fifty years they couldn’t put
up a fence along the Mexican border to keep illegals out, but when it’s a matter of
keeping white people in, they can build the McCurtain and fence Montana in half,
in nine months. Go figure.”
“We got bolt cutters,” said Eddie from the back.
“When you get to the fence, be careful,” said Cornwell. “There are
minefields in a lot of places leading up to it. Some of the minefields are posted
with signs, some aren’t, and sometimes they’ve got the signs up but no minefield. I
can’t give you any advice on where to try and break through. I don’t know that part
of the state well.”
“Why not come with us, and cross over with us?” suggested Lorna.
“Can’t,” Cornwell told her. “I have to keep my nose clean. My ex-wife and
my two kids are living in Pittsburgh.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t… ”
Cornwell cut Lorna off. “Oh, yes ma’am, they would,” he said bleakly.
“They would indeed. We got a memo that made it very clear. That’s all I have to
say, except I still advise you to turn around and find some way out of your
problems besides heading west. You’ll probably be dead by this time tomorrow.
Forget you ever saw me.” Cornwell turned and stalked back to his patrol car.
“Was that an angel, Mommy?” asked Tommy.
“Maybe,” Lorna told him.
“No, son,” answered Eli. “That was just a good man who has been placed in
an impossible position by this hellish country and this sick society we live in. Just
like us, son. That seems to be America’s specialty, destroying everything that’s
good in it. It’s been going on for a hundred years now. Those people on the other
side of that fence are trying to fix what’s broken in the world, and that’s why we
have to get there.” Eli pulled the van back onto the interstate.
They got lost only once following Cornwell’s directions, and by midnight,
they were coming into Helena on Highway 12. They passed a mileage sign that
said Helena 14.
“How’s the gas, Dad?” asked Eddie. “We’re pretty much out of money.”
“The dial shows we got about a quarter tank left,” said Eli. “Better than I
thought we’d do. We need to get off this highway. We could start running into
military patrols or those private goon squads the cop mentioned any time now.
This is where the dangerous part begins.” He chose a side road at random and
exited. A few miles down the road he pulled over into a stand of pines and killed
the engine and the light. “I’m going to put the gas from the jerry can into the tank,”
he said. “That ought to do it for us, for better or worse. Give me a hand, Ed. Bring
the funnel. You girls get out and stretch your legs. Hang onto Tommy’s hand.”
They carefully drained the fuel from the can into the gas tank, and Eli tossed the
empty can into the trees. He looked up at the star-filled sky. “Guess I know now
why they call it Big Sky Country. Let’s see how much I remember from my army
map and compass training. That’s the North Star, so we need to keep on moving
west, in that direction,” he said, pointing down the road.
“Dad!” said Eddie. “That sounds like a helicopter!”
“Get away from the van!” commanded Eli. “They may have infrared
tracking equipment, which means that hot engine will show up like a Christmas
tree on their scope!”
The family moved off at a trot up a small hill and lay down behind it, almost
a hundred yards from the vehicle. A helicopter slowly settled down into the air
over the little pine grove, hovering, and then a spotlight beam snaked from the
chopper’s belly, weaved around for a bit, and found the parked van. Eli couldn’t
see any markings at all on the chopper. It seemed to hang in the air over the van
below it for a long moment, like a scientist studying a specimen under a
microscope, and then a chain gun opened fire on it in a stream of lead and tracer
bullets. The van’s gas tank exploded and a ball of fire rose into the sky, singeing
the pine needles on the trees and hurling burning debris all throughout the stand.
Then the copter rose lazily into the air and ambled off back into the sky.
“Those stupid assholes set the woods on fire,” said Millie, staring after them.
“They just don’t care.”
“They wouldn’t have cared if we were in it,” said Eli. “Maybe they thought
we were.”
“They didn’t even try to find out,” whispered Lorna, horrified.
“They probably have a quota of white people they have to kill every week,
like cops have a quota of speeding tickets,” said Eddie.
“Oh, Eli, everything we had in the world was in that van!” cried Lorna in
despair.
“No, honey, everything we have in the world is right here. Tommy, are you
okay?” asked Eli, reaching over and giving his son a hug.
“Bad men,” said Tommy calmly.
“Yes, son. Very bad men.”
“Now what?” asked Lorna.
“If I remember the map right, I figure we’re about three miles from
Interstate 15,” said Eli. “We walk. We have to stay on the road because if we
blunder around in the woods we’ll get completely lost. It’s risky, but we have no
choice. I’ll go first, then Eddie. Eddie and me will take turns carrying Tommy.
Lorna, you and Millie follow us, and hold hands, to make absolutely sure you don’t
get separated. If somebody comes and I yell move, we get off the road and hide
about twenty yards into the woods. We stay together at all times. Now let’s go.
Millie’s right, those stupid bastards have probably started a forest fire here, and we
need to clear out. Maybe it will serve as a distraction, although again, I think
Millie’s right. They don’t seem to care what they do.”
The family began walking down the road, away from the burning trees and
the smoke. There was no moon, but the sky was clear and the stars overhead were
bright enough to illuminate the two lanes of asphalt in a thin, ghostly light. Every
now and then, they passed unpaved access roads gleaming white in the half-light,
leading off to the right or the left, and occasionally darkened houses and mobile
homes on either side of the road, none of which seemed to be occupied. Twice
vehicle headlights appeared, once behind them and once in front, and they scuttled
off the shoulder and into the woods to lie in concealment in the scrub brush. The
first vehicle was a private car of some kind. The second set of lights turned out to
be a pair of Humvees containing men with M-16 rifles, moving slowly down the
road. In the darkness it was impossible to discern any insignia or tell who they
were, army, FATPO, Blackwater mercenaries, whoever. When they were gone
Millie and Lorna took the last two small bottles of water out of their handbags and
shared them around, making sure Tommy drank most of it. Then they trudged on.
Even summer nights in Montana were cold, and all their warm clothing had
been in the van. No one complained, and Tommy did not cry. Eli’s heart swelled
with pride at his family’s courage and hardihood in the face of an adversity that
Americans weren’t supposed to be able to meet any more. He began to get a
glimmer of understanding as to how the rebels of the Northwest had done it, how
they had thrown off the tyrant’s chains. At the very last minute, just before the
darkness descended forever, something had awakened in the white man. Eli could
see it now in his wife and his children. Freedom was near. They could all feel it,
sense it.
Eli had no idea how far they had walked, but at around three o’clock that
morning they saw a glow of light ahead, and ten minutes later they were standing
at a chain link fence looking down an embankment at Interstate 15 below. Now the
McCurtain was literally a curtain of steel, through which they could actually see
the Homeland. The roadside lights were still on, and they could see the empty
highway below them clearly. “I remember from the news something they said
about this border along 15,” said Eddie. “Technically speaking the border runs
down the median strip. The northbound lanes are on the American side and only
American official and military vehicles use it, otherwise you have to have a permit.
The southbound lanes belong to the Northwest Republic and they let anybody use
it who wants, just remember it’s at your own risk because of all the gun-toting
federal goons on the other side of the road.”
“I don’t see anybody,” said Eli. “Our bolt cutters got incinerated in the van.
We have to find some way to get through the fence.” He looked up and saw a coil
of razor wire at the top. “Climbing’s out. We have to find someplace to dig under.
Let’s move along and see if we can find some kind of dip in the ground, but be
careful. Remember what that state trooper said about land mines.”
As they moved along the fence, searching the ground, Lorna said to her
husband, “Eli, I don’t know if this makes it any better or not, but Stash was right.
There is no way we could have made it this far with him along.”
“I know,” said Eli. “It just pisses me off. I always accepted that one of the
immutable facts of my life was that my father was an evil son of a bitch, and I was
this really big man for turning the other cheek and taking him in, and not letting
him die in one of those hellish state nursing homes. One of the few points in my
plus column. Now as the last act of his life, Stash proves he was a bigger man than
I’ll ever be. Damn him!”
“You’ve got four other points in your plus column, Dad,” said Millie.
“Thanks honey,” said Eli.
“Dad, look here,” said Eddie, pointing. By the dim light of the interstate
lamps, they could see a small, grassy ditch worn by rain water drainage, about two
feet wide and two feet deep that ran under the fence. There was about a foot of
clearance between the jagged bottom of the chain link and the ground. “We can
enlarge this.”
Eli and Eddie both had clasp knives on their belts. They attacked the sides
and bottom of the ditch with the blades, breaking up the soil, for about five minutes
at a time, and then they and the women clawed at the earth, burrowing the dirt
away with their bare hands and throwing it aside. Then it was back to hacking
away at the ground with the knives. “You don’t think this fence is electrified, do
you?” asked Lorna.
“I don’t hear any humming, and I don’t see any joint boxes or ceramic
fittings or connectors,” said Eli. “We may have lucked out, honey. Just dig this out
enough for us all to slip through, then we dash across the highway and we’re free. I
doubt we’ll be the only white people showing up in the Northwest with nothing but
the clothes on our backs. As long as Eddie and I can work, we’ll make it. But we
have to get this done before the sun comes up. If anybody does see us, we’ll be
sitting ducks in the daylight.”
They dug away like lunatics, even Tommy helping to carry the soil, and
slowly the hole under the fence grew bigger. It was on a downward slope, and so if
they could just get the aperture beneath the fence deep and wide enough, they
could get through. But dawn comes early in Montana in July, and by the time the
hole was sufficiently enlarged, they could see without the need of the stars or the
highway lights. “Okay, Millie first, then we hand Tommy through to Millie,” said
Eli. “Then Lorna, then Eddie, and me last.” Eli was a large man, and the hole
wasn’t quite big enough for him, and so for another five minutes he had to chop
away with his knife and dig with his hands, but finally all five Horakovas stood
erect in the dawn on the other side of the fence.
Lorna looked across the highway. The countryside there looked no different
from what they had just left, scrubby brush and low stunted pines, but they all
stared at it. “There it is,” whispered Eddie. “Free land. White man’s land. No
niggers with guns from the Watch, no Mexicans, no junkies, no crooked cops
beating us and robbing us, no Jews laying Dad off, no more of their goddamned
laws and judges and creeps in suits telling everybody what to do and how to live.
No more America.”
“Let’s go,” said Eli. “Eddie, you carry Tommy.” They slid down the
embankment, onto the shoulder, and stepped onto the highway, just as a convoy of
armored vehicles came around the bend from the south. The lead vehicle was a
black Humvee with a mounted M-60 machine gun; behind it was an eighteenwheeler, and behind that a truck, carrying armed men in black fatigues. The
lettering on the side of the Humvee said Blackwater.
“They’ve seen us!” bellowed Eli. “Run!”
The family’s sudden appearance caught the mercenaries by surprise, and
they were almost across the interstate before the first machine gun and rifle bullets
began snapping over their heads and cracking into the concrete. They leaped onto
the soil of the Northwest American Republic and ran toward a small stand of pines,
but the driver of the Humvee apparently decided to ignore little niceties like an
international border, and the vehicle swerved across the interstate and pursued
them. So close! Eli screamed in his mind. So close, and now these animals are
going to murder my family for money! FOR FUCKING MONEY! He whirled,
whipped out the .45, dropped down on one knee and carefully emptied the
magazine into the oncoming Humvee that was plowing up the low hill after them,
trying to hit the driver. He must have hit something, because the vehicle swerved
and stopped, but the M-60 gunner opened up again. Eli remembered enough of Iraq
to hit the dirt, roll out, then jump up running, throwing the empty gun away as he
did so. He saw his family ahead of him, and they seemed to disappear. He reached
the point where they had been and saw that they were down in a kind of ditch or
gully. He looked back and saw that the body-armored mercenaries had de-bused
from their truck and were running through the scrubby pines after them, fanning
out. He jumped down into the wash and yelled “Come on!” to the others. “Eddie,
gimme the Glock! I’ll hold them off while the rest of you get into those trees!”
“Any last standing to be done, Dad, we do it together,” said his son.
Eli realized that they were trapped in the dry wash. Surrounded by the
enemy gunmen, the minute any of them poked their heads up they would be picked
off. At least we’ll die in the Northwest Republic, he thought, bitter bile and rage
rising in his throat.
Lorna, Millie, and Tommy were huddled against the wall of the dry wash,
their faces white with terror. All around them the mercenaries could be heard,
shouting and firing their weapons, maybe even shooting at each other. The gunfire
seemed to increase, the rattle of the M-16s mixing with a more hollow, popping
roll of automatic fire. Goddamned Iraq all over again, thought Eli, and then
something hit him. “Yeah,” he said out loud, puzzled. “Just like Iraq! Those aren’t
just sixteens, those are AKs!”
“What?” asked Eddie.
The Horakovas heard the engine of a motor vehicle coming toward them, but
from the western side of the wash. Then a man wearing tiger-stripe camouflage
and a coal-scuttle helmet appeared over their heads about ten feet away, kneeling
and firing a weapon Eli remembered as an MM1 revolving grenade launcher. The
shield on the side of his helmet was blue, white, and green. The soldier fired again
and again, and they could hear the explosions as his projectiles slammed into the
targets. Then a camouflaged Humvee drove into sight behind the soldier, on which
was mounted a Browning .50-caliber machine gun, the muzzle spitting fire and
thunder back and forth. For another minute there was shooting and shouting and
then it all died away, leaving behind an eerie silence.
A man got out of the Humvee and walked over to the wash, where the
Horakovas stared up at him. He was tall, and despite his light amber beard he
seemed little older than Eddie. He wore tiger-stripes and a peaked Alpine cap, and
on the cap and over his right shirt pocket was an eagle and swastika. He carried a
Kalashnikov rifle on his hip, the sling over his shoulder. On one collar tab was a
single black first lieutenant’s bar, and on the other were the black embroidered
letters NDF. “You folks okay down there?” he called. “Anybody need a medic?”
Eli looked at his family. None of them seemed to be hurt. “No,” he croaked,
shaking his head.
“We were shadowing those apes along the fire road on our side back there,
and we saw you make your break for it,” said the lieutenant. “Don’t worry, they’ve
all skedaddled back across the highway.” He reached down, took Eli’s hand, pulled
him up to ground level and said, “Welcome Home, comrades!”
Eli Horakova looked down at his wife. “Lorna,” he said, “I think we’ve
found your angel.”
VI. One Down, 999 To Go
(One year after Longview)
Northwest Broadcasting Authority – Channel 7 (Missoula)
Daily programming for October 21
6:30 a.m.............Morning Farm and Ranch Report (Ministry of Agriculture)
6:35 a.m.............National News and Weather (Broadcast Center, Olympia)
7 a.m..................Good Morning Northwest (current events from Broadcast Center, Olympia)
7:30 a.m.............Good Morning Montana (local news, weather and features with Jenny
Stockdale, Justin Richardson, and Craig Paul)
8 a.m..................Captain Kangaroo (black and white)
9 a.m..................Sesame Street
10 a.m................Red Ryder (black and white)
10:45 a.m...........Blue Peter (black and white)
11 a.m................Around a Northwest Garden
11:30 a.m...........Chess Master’s Corner
Noon..................The Edge of Night
12:30 p.m. .........Coronation Street (black and white)
1 p.m. ................Leave It To Beaver
1:30 p.m. ...........The Brady Bunch
2:30 p.m. ...........The Andy Griffith Show (black and white)
3 p.m. ................Gilligan’s Island
3:30 p.m. ...........Deputy Dawg (cartoon)
4 p.m. ................After School Theater: Crossbow. The continued adventures of William Tell and
his band of guerrilla freedom fighters against their arch enemy, the Jewish
governor Geisler.
5 p.m. ................Walt Disney Presents: The Swamp Fox
6 p.m. ................Local News and Weather – Jenny Stockdale
6:30 p.m. ...........National News – Broadcast Center, Olympia
7 p.m. ................My Favorite Martian – Ray Walston, Bill Bixby
7:30 p.m. ...........Mr. Ed
8 p.m. ................Sherlock Holmes
9 p.m. ................Movie – Night of the Grizzly (1966) – Clint Walker, Martha Hyer
11 p.m. ..............News Roundup
11:10 p.m. .........Movie: Day of the Triffids (1962) – Howard Keel, Nicole Maury
12:30 a.m...........National anthem, signoff
***
One year to the day after the signing of the Longview Treaty, the Northwest
Council of State convened in the meeting room in the old Washington state capitol
building in Olympia for a breakfast session. Red Morehouse chaired the meeting in
his capacity as Vice President of the Republic. Outside, bright morning sunshine
was quickly burning away the ground mist and dew. A clear first Independence
Day was forecast.
The building was much quieter and more orderly now that the Constitutional
Convention was concluded. “Right, comrades, we’ll make this quick,” said
Morehouse. “Everybody got enough scrambled eggs and toast and coffee off the
buffet? Or you can try the pancakes. My wife is down in the kitchen this morning,
and she made them. They’re highly recommended. Okay, we’re all here except for
the State President, who is in the air right now headed for Coeur d’Alene, as well
as General Barrow, who is in Montana this morning, and Comrade Stepanov, who
is down in Portland where he officially commissioned our new national symphony
orchestra yesterday. I will be able to give you a security brief, and we have Susan
Russell here sitting in for Andrei, since we finally decided that broadcasting and
entertainment were to be part of the Culture ministry and not have their own
separate portfolio. For those of you who have not yet met her, Comrade Russell is
the new director-designate for the Northwest Broadcasting Authority.”
Susan Russell was an attractive woman in her mid-forties, wearing a neat
business outfit of matching skirt, jacket, and shoes of the kind that had been de
rigeur in corporate America under the old régime. Everyone in the cabinet room
knew her story, since she had been discussed extensively prior to her appointment.
The new NBA director was what had come to be politely termed a “specialist,” as
well as several less polite slang terms emanating from more irredentist Volunteers.
A specialist was someone with technical or managerial qualifications whom the
Republic needed to perform a specific function, but who had not served in the
NVA or been involved in any kind of dissident activity during or before the War of
Independence. Specialists were coming more and more to the fore in the
administration of the new country, its economy, its technology, and in society as a
whole. Sometimes they had been employed by the United States or a state
government, and they had rendered at least lip service to the Union during the war.
In a few cases such people had even been active Unionists in one form or another,
who for whatever reason had stayed behind, and whose records at least did not
include any outright murder, torture, or informing.
Susan Russell was presently the highest-ranking official of the new
government who had no NVA track record. She had been offered the post because
of her pre-war experience in running a major chain of Christian television and
radio stations throughout the Northwest, her connections with the better
conservative elements in the old Republican party whom the Political Bureau
wanted to try and reconcile to independence under a new flag, and because of her
work in the old days with a number of campaigns against obscenity and sleaze in
television and entertainment. Susan was an evangelical Christian who had spent a
night in sincere and anguished prayer before taking a position that necessitated an
oath of allegiance to the Northwest Republic, committing herself to work alongside
people she had once considered to be criminals and murderers. She did so because
she wanted to continue with her life’s work of saving young minds from being
corrupted by the nauseating filth that had spewed forth from America’s airwaves
and internet servers for almost three generations.
Her appointment had been greeted with sullen suspicion by some former
Jerry Rebs, who viewed all evangelicals as Jew-worshippers. Her confirmation
hearing in front of Parliament’s newly established Communications Commission
had been turbulent. She had been attacked as well from the pulpit and
excommunicated from her own church for accepting a position in the NAR
government by the American-based headquarters of her denomination, although
the Northwest synod of the same denomination, men and women who knew Susan
personally, had in turn told their brethren in Christ down in Houston to go sit on a
nail, with appropriate scriptural references. She was catching flak and criticism
from all sides, but she bore up with a dignity and unruffled calm that impressed
Morehouse. “Thank you, Mr. Vice President, but you don’t need to address me as
comrade,” Russell told him. “We all know what I was doing during the Trouble. I
haven’t earned that title.”
“We have every confidence that you will, ma’am,” replied Morehouse.
“By the way, we call it the War of Independence around here,” growled
Fiona Bonnar.
“Whatever it was, it’s over now,” said Morehouse decisively. “It ended a
year ago today, in fact. Speaking of which, we all have places to be this afternoon
for various ceremonies and dedications, hence the meeting at this ungodly hour.
The Old Man says no statues or monuments for at least ten years after Longview,
and none of him at all until he’s safely dead and he can no longer fuck up, as he
puts it. He says the best monument we can build to those who died is the Republic
itself. That’s all very well and good, and I think we understand the point he’s
making, but we were able to get approval for a few historical markers to be put up,
before everyone forgets who did what, and where. These things need to be taken
care of while memories are still fresh. At least with these plaque dedications the
white race will finally be able to honor our martyrs, and there is no more
appropriate day to do so than today. Let me make sure I have everybody’s details
straight. General Morgan, you will be unveiling the plaque at the head of the I-205
Bridge in Portland, at the point where you led your men across onto the Oregon
shore on November the first of last year, correct?”
“Three o’clock this afternoon,” confirmed Morgan. “Carter Wingfield will
be conducting a similar ceremony on the Portland side of the I-5 bridge.”
“Comrade Ridgeway and Comrade Bresler will be representing the
government at those ceremonies, since they are both Portland veterans,” said
Morehouse. “Comrade Bonnar will be unveiling the plaque at the site of the battle
in Ravenhill, Washington, where her sister and our gallant comrades of the
Olympic Flying Column died, along with SS Captain William Vitale and NDF
Captain Lars Frierson. They’re the closest thing to survivors of the Column
available. They were in the scout car ahead of the main body, and so they were
able to escape the ambush.”
“I’ve never been to the site before,” said Fiona quietly. “I haven’t been able
to bring myself to go. This will be my first time.”
“Our hearts go with you, comrade,” said Morehouse compassionately.
“And our prayers,” added Susan Russell quietly.
Morehouse returned to his list. “The State President will be making a speech
at the site of the Singer home, which has been turned into a small garden memorial
after the Americans paved it over for a parking lot, and he will also be unveiling a
marker at the old Seventh Street post office in Coeur d’Alene, where our people
made their last stand against the Marines during the Sixteen Days. Tonight he
addresses the first incoming class at the Northwest Military Academy in
Sandpoint. I myself will be speaking at the site of Robert Mathews’ death on
Whidbey Island. The Americans built a Taco Bell there, but that has also been
cleared away. Art, you’re doing Sandpoint as well tonight, but this afternoon you
will be dedicating a plaque out at the new Ruby Ridge National Monument and
speaking to whoever cares to drive all the way out there, right?”
“The Guards are expecting at least a few thousand people to be there,” said
Flowers.
“Were we able to get Sarah Weaver to attend?” asked Morehouse. “I know
she’s in poor health.”
“Afraid not,” said Flowers. “The FBI got wind of it and they’ve arrested
Sarah and her whole family. Their official line is it’s simply a preventive detention
to prevent Sarah from embarrassing Chelsea right when her impeachment trial over
the Northwest is running into the home stretch. I talked to Frank, and he said let it
go, so long as they release the hostages after today. We can’t go to war over every
little insult these bastards throw at us. If not, if they’re hurt in any way, then that’s
another story. Then we turn it over to Charlie Randall to deal with.”
“Comrade Stanhope and Comrade Stepanov will be commemorating the
Treaty signing at the Lewis and Clark Hotel in Longview,” Morehouse went on,
referring to his notes. “Which is ironic, in that during the negotiations themselves,
they were on opposite sides of the table.”
“Returning to the scene of the crime,” said Stanhope, smiling. “In American
eyes, anyway.”
“Doctor Jennings is in Seattle, while Doctor Hassling and Comrade
DeMarco will be joining General Zack Hatfield and his surviving Third Battalion
veterans at Sunset Beach,” Morehouse went on. “Comrade Salvatore will be in
Spokane and Comrade Brennan will be in Boise. General Barrow is in Helena
today, where he will dedicate the marker at the old American courthouse there,
before we turn it into a Party headquarters.”
“Was Frank able to locate any of Jack Smith’s old crew?” asked Morgan. “If
memory serves, there were what, five or six of the Regulators who made it out of
that mess alive?”
“Eight, all told. Yes, he told me he found two of the column’s survivors, a
married couple named Stockdale, and they’re going to say a few words at the
dedication,” Morehouse confirmed.
“Another quick question,” said Morgan. “While we’re out gallivanting all
over the Republic, who’s gonna be stayin’ here and minding the store?”
“Our illustrious Minister of Agriculture,” said Morehouse, as Farmer Brown
raised his bullet-scarred hand with a grin.
“Please don’t start any wars while you’re in charge, Donnie,” requested
Stanhope gravely.
“You mean I can’t invade Luxembourg?” asked Brown in disappointment.
Morehouse chuckled. “Before we all head out, I just want a quick rundown
from all of you updating us on what’s happened since last week. I’ll kick off on the
security front. Regarding the question you asked last week, Art, BOSS is currently
holding about two thousand open files throughout the entire Republic, which all
things considered, out of a population of almost fourteen million people is pretty
damned good. Almost all of it is petty bullshit, drunken bar talk, possible
suspicious associations during the war, but nothing provable. Just people that gut
instinct tells the trenchcoat boys we need to keep an eye on. Of those open files,
only six show any sign of possibly being genuine espionage cases. The Americans
don’t seem to have gotten their act together yet as far as setting up a humintel
network in the Republic, which is good. Or else they have, and we simply haven’t
caught any spies yet, which is bad. We’re not sure which. Frankly, BOSS has to
have to become the most professional and efficient agency at what they do in the
government; our very racial existence depends on it. Patrick, how’s the
assimilation situation?”
“The current population of the Northwest Republic seems to be around
fourteen million, as you mentioned just now, Red,” said Brennan from Race and
Resettlement. “The first census is scheduled to begin in June, but since it’s strictly
voluntary, I don’t know how accurate it will be. In other words, we have roughly
what the population of our present territory was ten years ago, but there has been a
significant demographic, social, and economic realignment. We’ve factored out the
large number of non-whites who fled from the Northwest during the War of
Independence, mostly from the large urban areas along the I-5 corridor, and also
the Runaways from the past year since the Longview treaty. Looking at the white
figures under the last American census only, we figure about half of the Republic’s
present population was here ten years ago, and all the rest are incomers from the
United States, Canada, and all over the remaining white and Western world. This is
a good thing; it means that over half the population of the Republic has committed
an affirmative act of loyalty simply by coming here, at greater and greater risk to
themselves over the past year, as the United States and Canada have more
effectively sealed off the border with the McCurtain. The fact that the Americans
and Canadians are so worried that their own remaining economically and socially
productive white populations will flee to the Republic tells us something.”
“Where are most of the newcomers from?” asked Dr. Hassling.
“Mostly from the U.S. and Canada, including the future Aztlan as part of the
U.S., which technically it still is,” replied Brennan. “After that, the next largest
group is from the U.K., which isn’t surprising. Britain is slated to become the first
European country that goes majority non-white, and anybody with two brain cells
to rub together is getting the hell out, to anywhere they can. Then comes Germany,
and after that South Africa. Then Russia, which is a bit of a surprise. Finally comes
a hodge-podge from all over Europe. We’re sure there would be a lot more from
Australia than there have been, but the Aussie government has passed a full asset
confiscation law affecting anyone who can be shown to have a family member who
is residing here. They wiped out every one of Charlie Randall’s relations they
could find and literally kicked some of them out onto the street as an example.”
“How’s the housing sitch shaping up?” asked Morehouse.
“Good,” said Brennan. “The Runaways have left behind more than enough
abandoned housing, so we’re not running short yet, but we’re working with
Commerce and Industry to plan a building program which should begin next year.
When our inheritance runs out, as Comrade Ridgeway puts it, we won’t be caught
short. New white immigrants are arriving in the Republic at the rate of around
100,000 per month, most of them without American or Canadian exit visas, despite
the increasing danger of running the McCurtain, and we project those numbers will
increase. We still have two very large cities we need to fill up, of course, Seattle
and Portland, but we are encouraging our newcomers to take a good look at Idaho,
Montana, Wyoming and the eastern part of the country as a whole. We don’t want
to end up like we were under the U.S., with a densely populated coast hogging all
the goods and services, contrasted with a virtually empty interior. That’s bad in the
long run, economically, socially, and militarily.”
“The rotating seats of government should take care of some of that,” said
Morehouse. “As you know, our new Parliament begins its first formal session since
the election here in this building on November the first, and a lot of the
government departments will be concentrated here in Olympia because they’ll
need stability to function, but Parliamentary sessions will be alternated on an
annual basis between here, Salem, and Boise, using the old state legislative
buildings in each former state capitol. We will be relocating the ministries of Food
and Agriculture to Spokane, Energy up to Seattle, Education out to Missoula,
Commerce and Industry to Portland, and Race and Resettlement itself to Boise.
There will be other decentralization projects as well in the years to come. That way
we spread the employment and administration, and hopefully slow the growth of
the kind of massive bureaucracy and the Beltway mentality that characterized the
United States. Not to mention the military advantage of not having one single
capitol city for the enemy to knock out. John, how’s the border situation?”
“We’re still losing two or three men in border incidents every week,”
reported Morgan. “The NDF and the Guards don’t like it, as I think I’ve made clear
in past meetings of this Council, but the consensus seems to be that it’s acceptable
when faced with the alternative of a full-blown war with the United States in our
first year of existence as a Republic. If it’s any consolation, we’re giving better
than we get, and the Americans are losing more men, not that they give a damn.
The worst part is the casualties among the white refugees. It’s hard to get an exact
estimation of how many people are being killed trying to escape into the Republic,
because they’ve clamped down on their media big time, and almost none of the
incidents are even publicly reported any more. Unless an incident is actually
witnessed and reported by someone on our side of the line, we have no way of
knowing about it. My guess is maybe as many as a hundred people per week are
being intercepted before they get to the border. They’re arrested and sent to the
secret prisons the Americans have established, or else they’re killed trying to cross
the McCurtain by mines, booby-traps and electrified fences, or else simply gunned
down. The ADL and SPLC mercenaries are the worst offenders since they get paid
by the head, literally.”
“General Randall is arranging a major strike in the next couple of weeks that
will take out a large part of the upper echelons of the ADL and SPLC both,”
Morehouse informed the cabinet. “Hopefully the survivors will get the message,
but our real problem from now on is going to be this new Office of Northwest
Recovery thingummy that Chelsea Clinton set up as a kind of political bribe to
stave off impeachment.”
“Is she going to be impeached?” asked Fiona Bonnar.
“Looks like she’s going to have her mommy and daddy’s luck with that,”
put in Stanhope. “I still have some people back in the District who will talk to me,
and they think she’ll clear the trial vote next week by two senators. The régime
knows that a major assault on Israel by at least eight Muslim nations is coming,
and the Jewish lobby has decided they don’t want to change horses in midstream,
so they’re backing Chelsea with every hold they’ve got on the Senate, bribery or
blackmail or threats, no holds barred. They will expect her to be appropriately
grateful when the shit hits the fan over Tel Aviv.”
“I doubt she’ll win over the senators from Washington, Idaho, Oregon,
Montana and Wyoming,” commented Interior minister James Salvatore with a
chuckle.
“No,” said Stanhope, shaking his head. “Part of the deal as well is that she
signs off on a Senate resolution giving lifetime seats to all the remaining senators
and congressmen from our states from the last election under the U.S., so that’s
one solid anti-Northwest bloc that will be in Congress until they croak.”
“Gary, how’s your home town doing?” asked Morehouse. “You’ll be down
there later today. Did we make the deadline?”
“We did,” replied Bresler with satisfaction. “The second thing we will be
celebrating in Portland today is the completion of the reconstruction program.
Except for certain shelled-out or burned-out buildings that we decided to leave as
historical markers and reminders, the city is now one hundred percent restored and
functional. Not so much as a single cartridge casing lying on the street any more.
The president promised the people of Portland that we’d get the city rebuilt within
one year of the last shot being fired, and we made it with thirteen days to spare.”
There was a round of appreciative applause from the other cabinet members. “You
should thank Ray,” said Bresler, nodding to his fiscal colleague. “I still don’t
understand how he came up with the money.”
“I had Charlie and the boys knocking over liquor stores back in the States,”
said Ridgeway with a wry smile. “On my end, the currency changeover is on
schedule, and folks in the Republic will be spending their last legal U.S. dollars on
New Year’s Eve. We’ve officially pegged the credit at par with the dollar on
international exchanges, in case anyone is paying attention, and the official rate
here in the Republic will remain at one for one in the month of January, after
which we’ll let it float and see how it does. The euro, the pound sterling, the
Canadian dollar, the ruble and so on will reflect their U.S. dollar value at first. The
best thing someone in our position can do on the monetary side of an economy is
simply let everything find its own level. Economies are living organisms, and
sometimes I swear I think they have a brain of some kind. I think the Northwest
credit may drop a bit as soon as we de-regulate, but in view of the fact that we’re
headed for a highly productive economy with full employment, one that actually
makes things, it shouldn’t be too long before one credit is worth five or ten dollars
or more. We’ve been able to put almost a hundred million credits into circulation
so far in the form of gold, silver, and platinum specie, and about five hundred
million in banknotes. That’s actually not much for a country our size, but I want to
control the injection of capital into the economy and match it with genuine need
and demand. Can’t just start printing money like we’re Zimbabwe niggers.”
“Bart?” asked Morehouse. “National transit plan almost done?”
“Almost, thanks to the Labor Service and those thousands of eager new
immigrants looking for work the moment they set foot in the Republic,” said
DeMarco. “We’ve managed to get all the Republic’s existing rail lines back into
service after the Americans let almost all of them rust away. Major rail trunks have
all been upgraded for high-speed traffic. The rail bridge over the Columbia at
Portland is now up again, and it can handle six trains at a time, so you can now get
from King Street station in Seattle to Republic Station in Portland in a little under
an hour. Daily commuting between home and work from Seattle to Portland and
vice versa is now a practical possibility, and that’s something the United States
never accomplished.” This comment sparked more applause.
“Refresh my memory. Didn’t that used to be Union Station in Portland?”
asked Art Flowers.
“Yeah, but we changed it, for obvious reasons,” said DeMarco. “You can
now get to and from any inhabited area within the Republic of more than five
thousand people, within one hundred yards of your destination, with no more than
four transfers by combining bus and train, or Northwest Air. When the plan is fully
functional, we’ll have that down to full coverage of anyplace over 300 inhabitants
with only three transfers. Ridership of Northwest Transit is way up. Now that there
are no buses and trains full of violent niggers, Mexican gang members, drug
addicts, and advertisements depicting sexual perversion, white people are leaving
their cars home more and more. Expensive gasoline has a lot to do with that as
well, of course. No question in my mind we will turn a profit in our first full year
of operation.”
“Outstanding!” said Ray Ridgeway.
DeMarco continued, “Northwest Air is now running a network of flights
covering a total of forty destinations within the Republic, although a lot of those
are small prop job flights out of the larger airports. No commercial airlines from
outside the country are landing here yet except for Aeroflot, which we’re lucky to
have or else we’d be completely cut off from the rest of the world. I think we may
be able to lure Aer Lingus here soon. Private charters from the U.S. and Canada
are running so regularly that they might develop into scheduled flights if the
Americans allow it.”
“Aren’t the Americans cracking down on the charter flights?” asked
Morehouse. “I know some of the ones based in California now effectively amount
to commuter airlines.”
DeMarco jiggled his hand in the air. “Mmm, here and there, but they don’t
seem to have figured out exactly what they want to do about this whole blockade
thing, even as they’re establishing the McCurtain and shooting people who try to
run the border. The fact of life they’re having to work around is that there are a lot
of Americans who have ties here that involve legitimate family and business
reasons to travel in and out of the Republic, as well as citizens of other countries,
and if they interfere too much, it has political and PR repercussions. It pisses
people off when they can’t send Aunt Sadie in Seattle a Christmas card, or go to
their high school reunion in Spokane, and eventually that will generate blowback.
It looks like ZOG is planning to back off on the whole total no-contact, blockade,
illegal-to-come-here-at-all attitude. They’ve set up an exit visa and permit system,
and they are now allowing limited legal entry into the Republic through a small
number of border posts along the McCurtain, mostly on the interstate.
“There’s all kinds of restrictions, of course. You can’t take your whole
family, you can only bring in two hundred dollars in cash or traveler’s checks, and
you have to file an itinerary that includes everywhere you’re going and everyone
you’re planning to meet and why, and if you don’t check back out again within 48
hours of your mandatory return date the FBI comes knocking on the doors of your
next of kin. There are other restrictions and a long list of contraband items you
can’t take into the Republic, and all kinds of bureaucracy, which we all know isn’t
going to work worth a damn.”
“Joe, how are the phones?” asked Morehouse.
“I still think we need a separate Communications portfolio in the cabinet
here, so my ministry can concentrate on vital R&D, but Northwest Telecom is now
fully functional within the Republic with both land lines and cellular phone
networks,” said Jennings.
“Northwest Telecom is a statutory body,” said Ray Ridgeway. “We need all
of those outfits up and running successfully ASAP, because they constitute our
main substitute for income and property tax. How soon before we see a profit?”
“Couple of years,” said Jennings. “I still say cell phones at least should be
privatized and taxed. Frankly, we just don’t want to mess with it. The more each
government department has to deal with, the more bureaucrats we have to hire, and
we know where that road leads.”
“The Security Committee and the Political Bureau are twitchy about letting
any private parties get too much control of the nation’s communications,” said
Morehouse. “Yeah, we do know where that leads. That’s how the Jews were able
to slip the noose around America’s neck in the last century. Speaking of electronic
communications, Comrade Russell, I read over your NBA development plan. Both
the State President and I are impressed. I’ll have copies of the plan for the rest of
you to look over at next week’s Council meeting, but basically it calls for the
Republic to be producing all our own television programming within three years,
and churning out our own movies within two.”
“No more Gilligan’s Island re-runs, then?” asked John Morgan. “Shucks,
now I’ll never know if they git rescued!” There was laughter.
“That pilot program for kids you have running now, Crossbow, looks really
good,” DeMarco told Susan. “I saw the first three episodes. Where do you shoot
that? It sure looks like Switzerland.”
“Leavenworth, Washington,” Susan Russell told him. “They have a kind of
German section of town there that they used to run as a tourist attraction. We throw
in stock footage of Swiss scenery and merge it into our own scenes using a special
computer program.”
“You’ve got some good actors,” admitted Flowers. “Of course Erica
Collingwood is going to upstage anybody anytime she’s on camera, since she’s a
heroine of the revolution in her own right, [see The Brigade] but that bruiser
you’ve got playing William Tell is also pretty impressive. And who’s that lovely
girl who plays Inga?”
“That’s James C. Marshall and Kelly Shipman, both of whom have worked
in Hollywood,” replied Susan. “We’re getting a lot of actors coming to the
Republic now, from Hollywood and New York, because the word is getting out
that there’s plenty of work here, and it’s possible to be a real actor without all the
lefty politics, the drugs and perversion, and the bad racial atmosphere. I’ve spoken
to Minister Stepanov about a Shakespeare and Restoration drama company that can
perform the classics both on video and in live theater, but I believe we need to
prioritize children’s and young people’s programming at first, because we have to
start forging a new healthy generation of white children.
“Crossbow is the first series put out by an NBA subsidiary, Asgard
Productions,” she went on. “We have other After School Theater projects in the
works, and by early next year our animation department will be producing our own
cartoons. I’m afraid the ancient sitcoms will still be around for a while. I know we
need adult programming as well, of course. Our acquisitions department is
scouring the world’s broadcast archives from America and Europe, television and
movies both, and digging up anything that’s clean enough and racially healthy
enough to use here. Where necessary, we steal digital copies off servers outside the
country. Then there are some programs and films that can be rendered usable by a
little creative editing, like Blue Peter, and we have a revision department working
on those. One of the current projects is cleaning up Sesame Street, getting rid of all
the non-whites and lefty propaganda, giving Bert and Ernie girlfriends, so forth
and so on, while leaving behind the good educational parts for toddlers. Adult
programming is more difficult, such as most crime and police dramas, since we
don’t want anything that idealizes or makes heroes out of American police or FBI.
Of course, everything Hollywood and the American industry turned out for half a
century was riddled with Jews, Marxists, and sexual deviates on all levels, but
sometimes all that’s necessary is to cut a few lines here and a scene there, and
remove all the Jewish names from the credits.”
“Wait until we get Lighten Up on line,” said Joseph Jennings.
“What’s that?” asked Morehouse.
“Lighten Up is a computer program with which we can ethnically cleanse
Hollywood movies and TV programs,” said Jennings. “We can replace nigger and
mud characters with white synthetic characters. Some of them will be used
multiple times and given names like they were real actors. Or we can use digitized
versions of real white actors. You have a smart-ass nigger like Will Smith or
Wesley Snipes in the lead, he can be replaced with Rutger Hauer or Viggo
Mortensen, complete with synchronized voice matching dialog. Or conversely, if
you’ve got some really sleazy white villain in a movie, you can turn him into Ving
Rhames or Jackie Mason.”
“While helping ourselves to the rest of a fifty-million-dollar Hollywood
production, technology and production quality and technique we can’t possibly
match yet. The mind truly boggles,” said Morehouse with a chuckle. “Fi, are we
healthy yet?”
“All the old hospitals are up and running, although short-staffed,” reported
Fiona Bonnar. “All Northwest communities are now served by clinics with at least
one doctor, although they’re mostly staffed with nurse practitioners and
paramedics. The new medical schools at the national universities in Seattle,
Pullman, Eugene, Spokane and Missoula will start their first classes within a few
months, although we’re going to have to stagger the academic year for a bit. The
National Ambulance Service is now in place, so the days when a ride to the
emergency room cost seven hundred dollars are over. On the downside, medicines
and medical equipment of all kinds are in short supply, and there is a bad shortage
of parts for X-ray, EKG and CAT scan machines, things like syringes and sterile
gloves, supplies of every kind. Our blockade runners are doing wonders, but it’s
still problematic. Minister Bresler and I are working on a plan to establish
manufacturing plants in the Republic for most of the small items, but the really hitech parts and supplies still have to be imported.”
“Once the trade credit bank is established I think we will be able to start
serious importation of medical supplies and gear direct from the source, Fi,” said
Ridgeway. “It will be breaking sanctions and exposing vendors to risk, it will have
to be surreptitious for a long time, and we’ll be paying through the nose, but when
someone is willing to pay over market price for something, there will always be
someone willing to sell. The capitalists are spot on about the profit motive in
human nature.”
“Joe, getting back to your department, I’ve been meaning to ask, how’s your
mad scientist project coming?” asked Morehouse.
“It’s starting to get into gear,” said Jennings. “We’ve established lab and
plant facilities at the universities in Seattle, Missoula, and Eugene, and the word is
getting out among the egghead community around the world that we are willing to
look at and bankroll virtually any crackpot idea that any scientist or inventor comes
up with, at least until it proves through research and experimentation to be a bust.
Right now we have embryonic projects in anti-gravity, wireless energy
transmission, genetic cloning of extinct species straight out of Jurassic Park,
human longevity and half a dozen possible cancer cures the Big Pharm companies
under the old order wouldn’t bother with because it cost too much money, or else
because they wouldn’t have been able to make enough profit on ‘em.”
Dr. Paul Hassling spoke up. “The most important and top secret are our
energy-related projects, especially nuclear cold fusion, but we’re also going to be
able to come up with working prototypes of two compact, inexpensive, and
efficient new engines, one alcohol and one methane. That will be within the year.”
“Both of which fuels we can manufacture, rather than import,” Bresler
pointed out. “We can turn corn and potatoes into alcohol, and pig and chicken
guano into methane. Small quantities at first, and to be sure, not enough
completely to eliminate the Republic’s need for fossil fuel yet. But we can make
enough fuel and convert enough of our energy production to take the edge off at
least, and eventually we will have no need for petroleum imports at all.”
“Anything else so urgent that it can’t wait until next week?” asked
Morehouse. “Right, then we all need to get on the road, except for Comrade
Minister Brown here, who gets to plunk his butt down in the presidential chair for
a few hours.” Morehouse stood up. “Comrades, we have kept the Republic free and
moving forward to a glorious white future for one full year. Quite a feat, one those
bastards who spent the past century trying to wipe us off the earth never thought
we’d accomplish. That’s one down and nine hundred and ninety-nine to go. I’ll see
all of you back here on Friday, and we’ll start to work on year number two.
Freedom!”
Part Two: The Empire Strikes Out
Cascade, Idaho
The oak and poplar trees grew tall around our mountain farm,
With corn in the fields and alfalfa in the barn.
Word came over CNN and Fox News to our door,
The NVA in Coeur d’Alene had started up a war.
Our days of living good were short, and little did we know,
We’d be driven out by murderers from Cascade, Idaho.
Rebels shot some federal man, Johnson was his name,
Someone called the Hatecrime line and they held us to blame,
They kicked our door one morning as the sun was rising red,
They caught my husband half asleep and shot him in his bed.
Someone had called us racists, and that’s all they had to know,
Those murderers came to our home in Cascade, Idaho.
They dragged me out and beat me bloody so I would confess,
They pointed guns at both my kids and threatened them with death.
We got no trial or jury, just a single rubber stamp,
That shipped us to Nevada, to the Hawthorne FEMA camp.
We lived in tents in summer heat and freezing winter snow,
We won’t forget those murderers in Cascade, Idaho.
The war was done, and finally we got our homestead back,
But we know well they’re waiting on the border to attack,
It won’t be like the last time when you brutalized my sons,
‘Cause now my boys are old and strong enough to hold a gun.
So come right on, you bastards, and before you die, you’ll know:
We won’t be driven out again from Cascade, Idaho.
-The Next Generation, popular NAR folk group. Hit song from the year of Operation Strikeout.
VII. Things Moving In The Shade
(12 years, four months and 20 days after Longview)
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and
philosophy. - John Adams
“Come on in, Jeff,” said General John Corbett Morgan. “Close the door.”
The big Kentucky mountain man’s black beard and hair were now flecked with
gray, but he was still impressive and bulky in his green and khaki NDF uniform,
and the measurement of his barrel chest was still greater than his waist even in
middle age. A tendency to trade off the top jobs between old NVA vets in the
Northwest Republic’s government had appeared over the past dozen years, and so
John Morgan was now into his third year as NDF Chief of Staff here at Fort Lewis,
Washington, while his old comrade in arms from Volunteer days, Carter
Wingfield, now held down his old Council of State portfolio as Minister of
Defense up in Olympia.
Colonel Jeff Garrison, who now entered the office, was tall and
mustachioed, a 35-year-old senior analyst from CMI (Combined Military
Intelligence). He stood to attention, and saluted. “I got your latest update, colonel,”
said Morgan. “I need to go over it with you, and I asked Air Marshal Basquine and
Admiral Leach to sit in.” Air Marshal Billy Basquine, in light powder blue, was the
Luftwaffe’s Head of Service or commanding general. “Bloody Dave” Leach in
dark blue serge with an anchor behind the eagle and swastika on his uniform was
now the Kriegsmarine HOS. Leach had been a former U.S. Navy sailor before the
War of Independence, he came from a traditional seagoing family, and after his
stint as a Flying Column commander and then ramrodding Force 101 (what Force
101?) he returned to his original love, the sea. “Have a seat and tell us all whatall’s got you so hot and bothered,” said Morgan, with a gesture toward a chair.
Garrison sat down and plugged a thumb drive into the computer terminal on
the Morgan’s desk before him. The computer was on a small intranet that
connected only to the second workstation in the room, the plasma display screen
on one wall, and a special underground fiber optic connection the State President’s
own personal computer in his office in Olympia. The intranet had a new encryption
code every month, and no connection wired or wireless to the internet or any other
station, making it impossible to hack from the outside. Garrison authenticated
himself to the terminal with a voice code, a thumbprint, and a retinal scan before
the machine would accept and upload the data from his portable drive.
The upload was slowed down a bit by security scanning software. So far,
there had been only one serious computer system hack carried out by the United
States Office of Northwest Recovery against any network in the Republic’s
government, in the second year after independence. An American saboteur gained
entry to the Bureau of State Security’s main office, dressed in a Civil Guard
officer’s uniform. He delivered some genuine but routine paperwork to a secretary,
then he dropped a smoke grenade that set off a fire alarm. In the confusion, he
slipped a malware DVD into the machine on her desk which uploaded a destructive
virus onto the system, but which also triggered an alarm on the PC. The spy was
apprehended and shot trying to get out a window. His virus was nabbed and
quarantined by the IT technician on duty, but it had already destroyed 80 percent of
the data on the server. BOSS’s ironclad practice of keeping paper copies of
everything in actual, physical filing cabinets enabled the system to be
reconstructed and brought back on line within a week. Not being able instantly to
network everything at the speed of light, like the Americans could, definitely
slowed things down in the Republic. But it also made data and facilities infinitely
more secure. In addition, the extra time and effort needed to perform many
procedures manually was conducive to more acute thinking and better efficiency.
The Republic had something the United States of America did not: filing clerks
who actually knew how to file.
Garrison got into the computer and flashed several grainy images on the
plasma screen. “To begin with, CMI has noticed several developments down south
of the border over the past forty-eight hours that give us cause for concern,” he told
the officers. “As you know, we’ve been intermittently hacking the American
surveillance satellite system for some years now, as well as the European and
Chinese satellites. They all know we’re doing this, they periodically figure out how
we’re doing it, and they either discover a way to interdict our hack, or else in some
cases they disable a whole satellite if they can’t get whatever bug we’ve put inside
it out of the system. In some of those cases, thanks to our Technological Warfare
Department and their brilliant egghead types, we have actually been able to
reactivate some of these dead spy satellites and reprogram them to spy for us, to
the great chagrin of the ONR and NASA.”
“The Lazarus Birds,” said Basquine with a chuckle.
“You got it, sir. These photos come from a Lazarus Bird, a satellite we’ve
raised from the dead. We keep it focused on key points of interest in Aztlan.
Unless the ONR’s computer nerds have figured out some way to hack us in turn
and dick with the images, these are legitimate.”
“How likely is that?” asked Basquine. “I mean, how likely is it that ONR
might be planting these images as disinformation?”
“Nothing is certain in the weird and wonderful world of spy technology, sir,
but we’ve matched these photos, tracked the subjects and collated their sequences
with other satellite feeds we’re intercepting, and also with ground intel in
California, and we’re convinced this is the straight dope,” Garrison told them.
“Something is going on down there in the land of the hot tamale we need to be
concerned with, no question.”
“Okay, what exactly are we looking at here?” asked Morgan, staring at the
pixilated images.
“The first series we see now was taken on Pier 84 and Pier 85 at the Puerto
de San Diego Zona Alta Seguridad,” said Garrison. “The vessels being unloaded
are the Chinese freighters Hangchow and PanAsian Star. Those are two megafreighters, the biggest class in the Chicom merchant fleet, and they are offloading
nothing but the same size container. Hundreds of them. One of our guys on the
ground managed to get inside the perimeter posing as a wino. He was intercepted
and badly beaten by Asaltos for his trouble—the place is crawling with them—but
he managed to report back. The containers are being loaded onto flatcars and sent
up to the El Cajon air base under heavy armed escort.”
“Not surprising,” grunted Basquine. “Virtually their whole air force is
Chinese or North Korean. Nobody seems to be able to teach mestizos how to fly or
maintain aircraft engines.”
“A team of operatives managed to get close enough early this morning to
snap this through a telephoto lens,” Garrison told them. He clicked up the next
photo, showing a long row of hangars with freight containers in the middle of a
cracked asphalt street. There seemed to be a lot of activity, trucks, vans, and
indistinct men in blue coveralls. Garrison brought up the next shot, which depicted
the open bay doors of one of the hangars, and then he clicked up the magnification
to maximum. Dimly visible inside the hangar was a long sleek metal craft on
landing skids. Men on top of it seemed to be attaching a rotor.
“Helicopters,” said John Morgan. “They’re bringing in helicopters. A whole
passel of ‘em.”
“Yes, sir, quite a passel,” replied Garrison. “We’ve confirmed that is a
Chinese Taipan Seven gunship, in the process of being assembled. We conjecture
that the containers each carry a military helicopter, either all Taipans or more
likely a mixture of Taipans, Dragonfly recon craft and possibly some transport
copters as well. If each container equals one chopper, then our beaner friends down
south have just acquired an armada of almost a thousand new aircraft.”
“For what purpose?” asked Leach. “And what did the beaners pay for all
those choppers with? Aztlan is just as perpetually broke as their cousins south of
the Rio Grande. The chinks don’t just give away firepower like that in exchange
for a few oranges and cantaloupes laced with disease.”
“I believe we can guess what they intend to do with their new toys, sir,” said
Garrison grimly. “Our computer hackers have checked incoming flights to LAX,
and also into Mexico City, and there seem to be a higher than usual number of
young male Chinese nationals flying in over the past week, allegedly as business
travelers or tourists.”
“Those would be the pilots and crews?” suggested Morgan.
“We think so, yes, sir,” confirmed Garrison. “Dispersed and carefully
inserted into Aztlan to try and avoid detection.”
“Our observers on the ground break contact and E&E okay?” asked Leach.
“Yes, sir. But this sudden influx of air power into Aztlan isn’t the only item
that’s caught our attention of late,” Garrison went on. “You gentlemen will recall
that the status report for last month included a copy of some Pentagon e-mails
detailing the combined summer exercise planned by the U.S. Army, Air Force, and
Marines in North Dakota and eastern Montana? The one they call Operation Blast
Furnace?”
“Yeah, they’re rattling their saber like they do every couple of years,” said
Basquine. “They’re always massing troops on the border and playing war games,
testing our reaction. We move our own troops up to the border and have our own
war games, and we make it clear that any time they want to come over and play
with us, we’re ready.”
“That may be what they’re doing this year as well, sir, but we picked up on
something that’s a little disturbing,” said Garrison. “Earlier this year the Canadian
government in Ottawa approved a really major chunk of budget for highway
reconstruction, in theory all over the whole country. But the only place this
makeover has actually begun is on two fairly insignificant rural roads, Provincial
Highway 18 in Saskatchewan and Highway 501 in Alberta.” Garrison clicked up a
map onto the big screen. “They’re re-grading, re-paving, adding multiple lanes,
and strengthening bridges to bear greater loads. As you can see, both of those
Canadian highways run more or less parallel to the U.S. border until 501 runs into
National Highway 4 at Milk River, Alberta, right on our own border.”
“You think the Americans may be reviving Operation North Star?” asked
John Morgan keenly.
“Could be, sir, if President Wallace has managed to arm-twist the Canucks
into going along with it,” said Garrison.
“What’s Operation North Star?” asked Air Marshal Basquine.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot, that was before your time, Bill,” answered Morgan.
“One of the Pentagon’s invasion plans a few years ago was called Operation North
Star. It called for moving a major force into Canada, rolling west fast and hard just
north of the border, and then forking and slashing down into Montana and Idaho to
take Kalispell and Coeur d’Alene.”
“Rather like the Schlieffen Plan the Germans used in World War One to hit
the French through Belgium on an undefended frontier,” added Colonel Garrison,
who was something of a military history buff. “The trouble was, the Belgians
resisted and managed to slow the Germans long enough for the French and the
British to react. If you’re going to invade another country through a neutral nation,
you need to make sure the locals stay neutral. Operation North Star fell through
when the Canadian government of the time wouldn’t go for it. They hate the
Northwest Republic with a passion that amounts to insanity, but they also fear us.
We’re militarily stronger than they are, and Ottawa doesn’t dare take us on alone.
They know a large segment of the white population of western Canada wants to
throw in with the Republic, and they don’t want to get involved in a war where
they might lose all or part of their western provinces.”
“Could that reluctance on their part have changed?” asked Leach.
“Maybe,” said Morgan, ruminating as he ran his fingers through his beard.
“They’ve got a new prime minister now who has opened the gate to all those
refugees from what used to be Israel, and in return the Jews have backed his
government with every penny and ounce of influence and propaganda they can
muster, which is still mighty considerable.”
“That’s what’s most worrying,” said Garrison. “Canada now has a million
Israeli Jews and the U.S. now has at least three million, who are screaming at the
top of their lungs for revenge because they blame the Republic, correctly I think,
for undermining the American Middle Eastern oil empire to the point where it
collapsed. When that happened, Israel lost their American lifeline and became
unsustainable. In addition to which, President Wallace is coming up for re-election
for his third term this fall, and he needs to be seen taking at least some steps to
recover the Northwest, as per his campaign promises when he ran on that whole
ONI spritz.”
“One Nation Indivisible my ass!” growled Morgan. “But I have to admit, it
worked. It not only got him elected, but he’s kept up the drum beat, and with the
Jews backing him he’s managed actually to get some things done and halt the
U.S.A.’s slide into complete chaos, at least somewhat. And he’s built their military
back up again after that series of disasters in the Middle East.”
“One more thing, gentlemen,” said Garrison. He clicked on the computer
and brought up several documents from the United States Department of Justice
marked Top Secret, which he followed with more documents from the Department
of Defense.
“Jesus, you guys must have every janitor and cleaning lady who empties a
wastebasket in Washington, D.C. working for you!” said Leach admiringly.
“It’s more complicated than that, Admiral,” said Garrison. “Sometimes
people die to get us these documents. Their people, and ours.”
“WPB get you most of this stuff?” asked Morgan.
“Some of it, sir, certainly. The Circus has a very good crew in place in the
District, no question, but most of it’s our own CMI ops,” said Garrison.
“Two foreign intelligence agencies?” asked Basquine. “Don’t you ever
duplicate one another’s efforts?”
Garrison nodded. “Sometimes, yes, sir, but that’s a good thing, when we can
confirm each other’s intel. The only way a head of state like President Morehouse
can ever find out how good his intelligence service really is, is the hard way—by
having it fail him. Hence the duplication. The Republic uses both suspenders and
belt. Anyway, the upshot of all these documents is that the old FATPO training
school at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is being re-opened and a large number of
personnel from the Army, the Marine Corps, the six or seven secret police
agencies, and a number of law enforcement agencies around the U.S.A. are going
to be attending a six-week course beginning next week. They call this Operation
Chain Link, and the whole thing is so hush-hush that the details and actual nature
of the mission aren’t even being committed to paper or computer drives. It’s
apparently only being discussed verbally by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the American
cabinet, and the White House. These picked personnel will be trained by former
FATPO officers and FBI agents, and also by a number of former Israeli military
personnel.”
“They’re reviving FATPO?” laughed Basquine. “Hell of a lot of good those
sons of bitches did them during the war!”
“I remember, sir,” said Garrison, a former NVA man himself.
“How many of them?” asked Morgan.
“About three thousand,” said Garrison.
“If they were planning on invading the Republic, I think they know us well
enough to get that they’d need a lot more than three thousand Fattie thugs with six
weeks of training to keep us down,” chuckled Morgan. “Thirty thousand of the
assholes couldn’t do it back in the day.”
“No, sir,” said Garrison. “But according to what we’ve been able to learn,
General, this six-week event is actually an instructor’s course. These first three
thousand are being taught to train others. The main intakes start early in the
summer, and will include drafts from what they call community activist groups,
meaning non-white street gangs from the cities, as well as elements from the
Mexican and Aztec military, including the Assault Guards. The documents also
refer to the formation of Israeli expat units serving under their own officers, many
of them personnel from the old Mossad and the Shin Bet secret police. Finally,
there is to be a unit called the Sacred Band, named after a probably mythical
ancient Greek force of charioteers and spearmen who supposedly were all
homosexual lovers. Apparently, the purpose of this grotesque thing is to prove
once and for all that so-called gay people can be military effectives, which will do
wonders to nail down the gay vote for Hunter Wallace for the November election.”
“And how many people will these main intakes consist of?” asked Morgan.
“They’ve budgeted and they’re gearing up for two hundred thousand men,
sir,” replied Garrison quietly. “They are building a permanent paramilitary army of
occupation for the Northwest, commanded by some of the most experienced killers
and torturers in the world. I can’t see them going to this kind of effort and expense
if they didn’t intend to use it.”
There was a long silence around the table. “Jesus, John,” said Leach after a
while. “They may really be coming for us this time.”
“I get a bad vibe offen this, boys,” said Morgan, shaking his head. “Okay,
here’s what we do. First thing tomorrow, I want the entire strategic planning staff
from all three services in the War Room. We will do a complete re-work of Plan
Sixteen, based on the assumption of a combined American, Canadian, and Aztec
full-bore invasion attempt sometime this summer, probably in June. These socalled war games of theirs are scheduled to begin on June twelfth, and I suspect
those uniformed time-servers and bureaucrats in the Pentagon still remember
enough basic military strategy to go for a quick victory in the summer and not let it
drag on into a winter war, especially east of the Cascades. Nobody in his right
mind wants to fight in Montana or the Sawtooth in the dead of winter and meet our
best generals, General January and General February. We will re-work Plan
Sixteen into Plan Seventeen on the basis of that assumption, and begin making our
dispositions.”
“When do we call up the reserves, John?” asked Leach.
“Not until we get something more solid. I have hopes that may come soon.
There’s an intelligence operation pending through the War Prevention Department.
Colonel, thanks for your report, and I’ll want to talk to you later about this
information and make sure I understand all the ramifications. But right now I need
to discuss something with my comrades here that’s a bit above your clearance
level. No offense.”
“None taken, sir,” said Garrison, standing up. “First rule of intelligence: no
one can reveal what they don’t know. I use it all the time.” He saluted the officers
and left the room.
Morgan turned to the other two. “I was at a security briefing at Longview
House a couple of days ago,” he told them. “Charlie Randall was there. He says
good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, the Circus may finally have a shot at
placing an asset of ours in the White House. Right next to the President of the
United States himself.”
***
At the same time the senior officers of the military were meeting at Fort
Lewis, down in the capitol city of Olympia, a lieutenant in the Civil Guard parked
his alcohol-fueled private car and walked into a nondescript three-story office
building on a quiet side street. There was no sign outside the building indicating its
occupants or purpose, and all of the blinds in the windows were closed, despite it
being a sunny, windy spring day outside. The Guardsman was alert and observant
enough to spot the discreetly placed surveillance cameras covering the entire street,
but otherwise everything was as quiet as a ghost town.
He walked through the front door and into the building’s lobby, which was
bare except for a desk behind which sat an elderly man in a shabby suit and tie that
looked about forty years old. It was dark in the lobby, and the old man was reading
a Dostoevsky novel in the pool of light cast by a green-shaded banker’s lamp onto
the desk. The young cop glanced up and saw some slits in the wall high above his
head. He was reasonably sure someone was behind those slits covering the lobby
with a rifle or automatic weapon. He walked up to the old man. “Good afternoon.
Guard Lieutenant Robert Campbell to see the ringmaster.”
He expected the old man to be impressed, but he merely pressed a button
under the desk. “Wait here a minute. They’ll send somebody to escort you.”
“Aren’t you even going to ask me for my ID?” asked Lieutenant Campbell,
surprised.
“Son, anybody trying to sneak in here would have letter perfect ID, good
enough to fool me, and good enough to fool a scanning machine,” said the old man
with a snort. “Our security system is simple.” He flicked aside his blue serge jacket
to show a pistol in a shoulder holster. “We’re all packing. We make sure that
anybody who gets in who ain’t who or what he says he is, don’t come out again.
Beyond that, we don’t worry much about it. We got the gods on our side.”
Campbell had already spotted the blue, white and green Old NVA ribbon on
the man’s lapel, and even though it wasn’t necessarily required by protocol to
stand to attention in the presence of a former Volunteer, he straightened up. “Yes,
sir, we do,” he said. Then he saw a second ribbon on the receptionist’s other lapel,
all red and containing the tiny Roman numeral XVI. He gulped. “You fought in
Coeur d’Alene during the Sixteen Days, sir?” he asked.
“I did,” replied the old man. “Here’s your guy.”
A side door opened, and a young man Bob’s own age in shirtsleeves and tie
stepped out and beckoned. He did not introduce himself. “Lieutenant Campbell?
This way, please. He’s waiting for you.”
“It’s been an honor, comrade,” said Bob Campbell to the man behind the
desk, who was already back engrossed in The Brothers Karamazov. He and his
escort walked through a bullpen office full of desks and battered metal filing
cabinets that could have been found in a freight company or a factory, if all the
clerks of both sexes carried guns in hip or shoulder holsters. “I’ve never met a
Sixteen Days man before,” remarked Bob to the escort.
“That’s Gus Singer’s brother, Al,” the young man told him.
There was a short elevator ride, and Campbell found himself being ushered
into the large but Spartan office of the legendary General Charles Randall, director
of the War Prevention Bureau, or the Circus as it had come to be known, due to
somebody in the NAR government who was a John Le Carré fan. Some also
maintained that the organization’s nickname came from the death-defying feats its
agents performed on a regular basis.
Randall himself sat behind a large desk of varnished oak. He was not in
uniform today, but wore a sports jacket and a loosely knotted maroon tie. He was a
slim man in early middle age. His blond curly hair was beginning to pale at the
temple, and some white hairs were now visible in his neatly trimmed beard. His
desktop was almost painfully neat, with one in-tray and one out-tray, each filled
with file folders. There was a black plastic telephone with multiple lines sitting on
the desk that looked as if it had come from the previous century, and a green
banker’s lamp that might have been the twin of the one on the old man’s desk out
in reception. One wall of the office was lined with filing cabinets. Behind
Randall’s chair stood a Northwest Tricolor flag in a stand, and beside it a small
sideboard on which was a large glossy photograph of the famous Hollywood
actress whom he had married, as well as a number of photographs of their children.
The story of how Randall had met the actress was by now enshrined in the new
nation’s mythology. He had supposedly seduced her and turned her into an NVA
intelligence asset, and used her to carry out Operation We Are Not Amused, which
was probably the most famous and spectacular guerrilla action the NVA ever
pulled off. [See The Brigade]
Campbell stood to attention and saluted. Randall flicked his own hand to his
temple in casual acknowledgement and pointed to the chair in front of his desk.
“Park it, Lieutenant.” Randall was originally from Brisbane, and his accent was
still heavily Strine. Campbell did so. Randall reached into a drawer, rooted around
and pulled out a file. “Did you tell anyone you were coming here?”
“No, sir, I was instructed not to.”
“Good,” said Randall. “This entire meeting is covered by the Official Secrets
Act. Neither you nor I are here. This building does not exist. All is a figment of an
opium-eater’s nightmare. If one word of it gets out via anything you say or do, I
will have your guts for garters, and I am not speaking figuratively. Got it?”
“Got it, sir,” confirmed Campbell.
Randall was glancing through the file in his hand. “No idea at all why I
asked to see you?”
“None, sir, although I applied for WPB six years ago, when I completed my
military training. That’s as close as I can guess.”
“You grew up in Missoula,” Randall continued. “Your sister is former
Northwest Volunteer Jennifer Stockdale, and your brother-in-law is former
Volunteer Jason Stockdale, now Chancellor of the University of Montana. You
completed your military service as a sergeant, you qualified as an expert marksman
and demolitions specialist, and you were rated as fluent in Spanish, which is now
necessary to operate anywhere in the United States, never mind Aztlan. At the
conclusion of your two-year national service hitch you were offered an
appointment to the military academy at Sandpoint, but you chose to go into the
Civil Guard instead. At the same time you applied for both BOSS and the WPB.
Why not become a regular, Lieutenant Campbell? First step to the SS. And why
BOSS and WPB?”
“My reasons will probably sound a bit infantile now, sir,” admitted
Campbell. “The fact is that I always admired and idolized the hell out of Jenny and
Jason’s Volunteer service during the War of Independence, and I guess I wanted to
show that I could have my turn as well at the danger and adventure of covert ops in
the service of the Folk, that kind of thing.”
“That’s commendable, comrade, not infantile. You passed the WPB entrance
examination with flying colors, then six months later you withdrew your
application before you could be assigned an intake number at the School of
Intelligence,” said Randall, reading over the file. “Why did you drop out?”
“WPB agents are not allowed to marry, and I decided to go ahead and start a
family,” Robert told him.
“Actually, that’s not entirely correct,” the Australian replied. “In view of the
nature of our work and the high potential for catastrophic work accidents in this
organization, WPB agents are not allowed to marry without permission, which is
sometimes granted, if only as a necessity for maintaining a couple’s cover when
they’re operating Out There. You say you withdrew your WPB application to start
a family. Your people Christian? Or your wife’s?” asked Randall.
“No, sir, I’m a National Socialist, and her family are traditional Catholics
from Chicago who fled to the Republic a few months after Longview,” said
Campbell. “My mother-in-law is religious, and she’s got an angel thing going. The
rest of them go to church on major festivals like Christmas and Easter and Saint
Wenceslas’s day—he’s the patron saint of Bohemia, and the patron saint of beer as
well, which is definitely appropriate in my wife’s family—and they pretty much
ignore it the rest of the time. I understand that because of our racial need to re-fill
the cradles, as the Party puts it, the Ministry of Culture has done everything
possible to ease the stigma against illegitimacy, but nonetheless, I decided I was
going to do things the old way and marry the mother of my child.”
“Old-fashioned enough to give up a slot at SoI?” asked Randall.
Campbell took a deep breath. “No disrespect intended, sir, but when it came
right down to it, I had a choice to go off spying and adventuring like the Scarlet
Pimpernel on the one hand, leaving behind a young woman whom I loved and who
would have been the mother of my son, or I could take a pass on the Pimpernel
path, stay home, and take responsibility for Millie and Bob Three. That’s my son’s
name, Robert Campbell the Third. I’m not sorry I went into the Guards instead.”
“Where you did quite well,” said Randall, perusing the file. “Your station
commander in Missoula recommended you for detective after two years on the
beat. And there is not a bloody thing wrong with deciding to come home to a wife
and child every night instead of hiding in some fleabag furnished apartment in
Atlanta waiting for a phone call, or strangling some drunken ex-Fattie in an alley in
Houston and taking his wallet to make it look like a robbery to throw the cops off.
The Way of the Pimpernel is very much overrated. You understand I wouldn’t be
asking all these personal questions if it weren’t relevant?”
“Yes, sir. May I ask what this is all about?”
Randall closed the file and dropped it on his desk. “All right, but before we
get into that, Lieutenant, I want to tell you a couple of things. To begin with, just to
grab your attention, there have been some recent intelligence developments that
may indicate the Northwest Republic is facing a full-scale invasion by the United
States, Canada, and Aztlan with substantial military help from the People’s
Republic of China. Probably within the next few months.”
Campbell’s blood ran cold. “The real thing this time? Not just more
posturing and war-gaming and grab-assing on the border, sir?” he asked.
“We think not,” said Randall. “We think this time they’re coming to destroy
us, kill anyone who had anything remotely to do with the Party or the War of
Independence, deport most of the Republic’s population to work camps in the
southwest and in Mexico itself, and enslave the remaining white population of the
Northwest. Soviet-style internal passports and work permits, political loyalty
boards without whose approval no one works or eats, federal regulations dictating
what you can eat and what you can drive and what you can think, masses of armed
niggers and beaners wearing federal badges patrolling the streets of Portland and
Seattle again and doing whatever they want, to anybody they want. This time it’s
the real thing. They’re coming for us, and soon. I am telling you this first, so that
you will understand that everything I have to say to you is deadly serious and
vitally necessary to the survival of this Republic and to the survival of our race on
earth. Because if we lose the Republic, Lieutenant, that’s it for us palefaces.
Liberal think tanks in New York and Washington are already talking about what
they will do when they succeed in destroying us. They call it eliminating racism
through eliminating race, by using science and medicine. Mandatory sterilization,
along with compulsory interracial marriage and breeding for those whites who
aren’t sterilized. Get the picture?”
“I get it,” Bob said.
The Australian went on. “The second thing you need to understand is that
there is not a bloody thing romantic or adventurous about what we do in this
department, although you’ve got the dangerous part down right enough. A lot of
what we do is dishonest, treacherous, unpleasant, and in some cases downright
vile, which is the nature of the spying game. We have to work with our hands up to
our elbows in the backed-up toilet bowl of the soul which is the United States of
America, or in some cases Canada, where the only difference is the evil men and
women who rule in the Jews’ name say ‘eh’ a lot. I say this, Lieutenant, because
the job I have for you is one of the bad ones. It is nothing short of filthy.”
Campbell scowled. “Sir, I have two children and my wife is pregnant again,
and now you tell me that the Americans are coming to make sure that those kids
either die a horrible death now, or else they grow up to be slaves and junkies and
whores. If I can stop that by jumping into a backed-up toilet, then I’ll get as filthy
as it takes. What, exactly do you want me to do?”
“I want you to be a presidential pimp,” said Randall.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Bob, completely at sea.
“Let me break it down for you, Lieutenant Campbell,” Randall said. “The
normal WPB course at the School of Intelligence on Whidbey Island is nine
months. The day after tomorrow at 0600 hours, I want you to report to the SoI,
where you will be rushed through a special ten-day course which will spend about
fourteen hours per day teaching you the absolute bare essentials of what you have
to know in order to be one of the Republic’s spies and external enforcers.”
“You want me to complete a nine-month course in ten days?” asked
Campbell incredulously.
“Got it in one, mate. We need to shove you into the game head first, right
now. Once you get your ten days of training, you then get a false U.S. passport and
a false American FLEC card under a new identity. You will be issued another
FLEC card when you arrive on station in Washington, D.C. Station Cesspool.”
“What?” asked Campbell, bemused.
“Station Cesspool,” repeated Randall. “Nickname for our D.C. operation,
like calling the WPB itself the Circus. The lads call New York City Station
Shithole, for the same reason. You’re right in the belly of the beast in both those
stations, up to your neck in a toilet that hasn’t been flushed in about two hundred
years. Since you grew up in a sane white society, the things you will see and
experience there may well drive you clinically insane. It’s a problem we have with
our ops Out There. Sometimes they just can’t take it any more, and they go
bonkers in spectacular ways. You can’t go bonkers, though. You have to stay
focused on your mission.”
“Which is what?” asked Campbell.
“How much do you know about the President of the United States, Hunter
Wallace?” asked Randall.
“Uh, just what I read in the papers,” said Campbell. “The guy’s a scumbag
white traitor, but that’s a given, as if any other kind of person could be elected to
office in the United States. The last honest politician the United States ever
produced was Andrew Jackson. I think I read somewhere that Hunter Wallace
started out on the internet back in the ‘teens, as a false-flag blogger and a black op
under the old Cass Sunstein Cognitive Dissonance program. He gathered
information for the régime and for the régime’s NGOs like the Anti-Defamation
League of B’nai Brith and the Southern Poverty Law Center, for money. As a
reward for his cyber-services he was given a staff job in D.C. on some liberal
Congressman from Alabama’s payroll, and the rest, as they say, is particularly
repulsive history.”
“Go on,” said Randall with a smile.
Campbell shrugged and complied. “Worked his way up to the point where
he was actually able to steal the Alabama Congressman’s seat from him, and from
then on Wallace never looked back. He had just entered his second term when the
War of Independence ended at Longview, he saw his bandwagon coming a mile
off, and he jumped on it. From then on he was Mister Reunification. His rap is an
interesting combination of liberalism, neo-conservatism, and Christian Zionism all
rolled into one. He calls it One Nation Indivisible, and it’s basically the social
program of the Clinton Democrats, the unfettered economic buccaneering of the
Wall Street banks, combined with the American Exceptionalism of Rush
Limbaugh and a heavy dash of 700 Club. I know that doesn’t sound possible, or
even coherent, but Wallace wraps it all in a big red, white, and blue American flag
and he pulls it off somehow. Everybody gets most of what they want, or they think
they do. Wallace’s one-note symphony for some years has been We Must Recover
Amurrica’s Lost Jewels of the Northwest, punish wicked racism, and make
everybody love and bugger one another under Old Glory regardless of race, creed,
color, or species, all the while singing Kumbayah and praising Jesus. I know it’s a
lot more complex than that, sir, but that’s what I hear.”
“Not bad,” said Randall with a nod. “Pretty much tells the tale, that does, but
there are some things you don’t know. Hunter Wallace made a decision very early
on in his life that he was going to make his fortune as a shabazz-goy, a Gentile
gopher for the Jews. He wasn’t recruited to work for Cognitive Dissonance on the
internet, he volunteered. He heard about the program when it was leaked to the
media as far back as 2010, when he contacted Cass Sunstein and pestered him until
Sunstein took him on. Wallace is a wretch, but he’s no fool. He made a conscious
decision at an early age that the Jews had the capacity to dispense to him the
wealth and the power he craved, and he would do what he had to do for them in
order to get it. He’s never wavered from his decision since, and he’s been well
rewarded for it. He has always been in Hymie’s hip pocket. Right now, his handler
for the Tribe is his White House press secretary, a former journalist named Angela
Herrin, real name Herrenstein, born in Israel. Now, what do you know about the
illustrious Leader of the Free World’s, uh, practices I suppose you’d call them,
with women?”
Robert frowned. “I know Wallace isn’t married, and part of his public
persona is to be seen in public escorting all kinds of movie stars and female
celebrities to political functions, public social events, concerts, baseball games,
that kind of thing. Seems to me I read somewhere he actually charges money for
his campaign committee and his private slush fund to escort somebody’s daughter
or wife to a public do and get their picture in the media. Is that the kind of practices
with women you mean, sir?”
“Uh, no,” said Randall carefully. “Bloody hell, I guess we are doing a good
job in cleaning up the Republic’s moral culture since the Revolution, if a lad of
twenty-six has to have it spelled out for him. When I was your age, mate, our
minds were right in the sewer all the time, so we didn’t have far to fall. Anyway,
President Hunter Wallace has a medical problem. Has had since he was young,
same problem a lot of white males of his generation have due to eating industrially
produced and chemically enhanced food as a child and the general level of
pollution and environmental contamination with every toxin under the sun that
exists in the United States. Hunter Wallace suffers from what’s known as hypogonadism, which is a fancy way of saying his nuts are the size of pencil erasers, his
sperm count is three or four on a good day, and it’s impossible for him to have
normal sexual relations with a woman. And so he does what any rich and powerful
American man does who can’t have normal sexual relations with a woman: he has
abnormal ones. I won’t get into exactly what he does, since I just ate lunch. You
will be briefed on that when the time comes…”
“What?” asked Campbell incredulously. “Look, sir, how can the sexual
perversions of the President of the United States be relevant in any way to some
mission I have to undertake for the Circus?”
“They are, I’m afraid,” sighed Randall. “This is where we get into the bad
part. Look, mate, I’ll tell you what I want you to do, and it’s bloody important. It
may be able to help us turn away this invasion we think is coming. But I’ll say this
up front: what I’m asking of you is a bloody filthy thing, and if you want to say no
and walk right out that door, you’re free to do so. I could order you to do it, but
that wouldn’t be any good. You’d hate every minute of it, you’d resent the hell out
of the Circus for making you do it, and you’d probably blow the mission, and
that’s not an option here. If you cannot in conscience help us with this, Lieutenant,
then we’ll find some other way.”
“Uh, sir …”
“Right, I seem to be having difficulty getting to the point, probably because I
don’t really want to,” said Randall with a sigh. “Wallace goes through women on a
regular basis about every six months, most likely because that’s all most women
can stand. Our D.C. station is able to monitor internal White House
communications via e-mail and phone—a lot of them, anyway—and we know who
Hunter Wallace has set his sights on as his next conquest, I guess you’d call her,
only in his case it’s more a command performance. She’s twenty-two years old.
She’s got some half-assed patronage job as a publicist at some K Street political
consulting firm, one of those American gigs where liberal birds with the right
connections can draw three hundred grand a year for doing bugger all.”
“And she has the right connections?” asked Campbell.
“She does. Prominent Washington family, liberal Democratic pedigree going
all the way back to Hubert Humphrey. Wallace saw this Sheila at some political
drinky-do and apparently fell head over heels in lust. If he follows his regular
pattern he’s got about a month left with his current ‘personal services assistant,’
which is the term they use at the White House for the boss man’s bit of all right on
the side, so he should pension her off with a cushy job at the Pentagon or the EPA
or something and make his approach to this new girl in about four weeks, say mid
to late April. Before then we need you to approach this woman, connect with her,
and persuade her to work for us, to pass information to the Circus from right inside
the White House itself, literally pillow talk with the president. If he talks at all,
which we don’t know. We need you to act as this woman’s handler, collect her raw
intel and pass it on, keep track of her progress and keep her focused, keep her
morale up, and keep her from going off the rails in the light of what this bastard
Hunter Wallace will be doing to her in bed, which I repeat will be bloody abnormal
and enough to make a dog vomit.”
“Yes, sir, you’re right. It’s a repulsive assignment, and yet getting an
informant right next to the President of the United States is clearly something the
Republic has to do. I’m in. And now the big question,” continued Robert, “Sir,
why on God’s green earth do you need me of all people to do something like this?”
“Because you know the girl,” Randall told him steadily.
“Huh? I mean, sir?” asked Robert, gaping, uncomprehending.
“Her last name is Halberstam, but that is her Jewish stepfather’s name,”
Randall told him. “She was born in Montana and you knew her as a child. You
knew her as Georgia Myers.”
VIII. World War Three Versus World War One
(12 years and five months after Longview)
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
The Northwest American Republic’s government had long pondered how
best to establish a War Room to respond to any existential threat. The problem was
that any such locale would be an obvious priority target for an enemy strike, with
the subsequent risk of decapitating the NAR’s defense command. The government
vetoed suggestions regarding a bunker, because of its obvious negative historical
connotations for National Socialists.
In the long run, the Northwest military decided that the best defense was to
have as little centralization as possible, and to train every unit in the Northwest
Defense Force to function independently within certain overall strategic
parameters, right down to the squad level. Every Northwest soldier, sailor and
airman knew his part of the overall war plan, the latest version being Plan 17. If
they were cut off from command, they would do their best to implement it, with
whatever came to hand. The NDF had a number of tricks up its sleeve to maintain
command communications during an invasion, but it would not set up that one
single head that might be cut off. The United States had never been able to defeat
the Afghan freedom fighters, in part because there was never any head to cut off.
The Taliban’s command structure consisted of nothing more than a couple of
bearded old men sitting on mats drinking tea in a hut somewhere in the mountains.
The NDF was more technologically advanced, but it aimed for the same effect.
Until the enemy bombs actually started falling, though, a special War
Cabinet group had been established. It met regularly in the capitol building in
Olympia, at Fort Lewis, or at various military installations. This special inner circle
consisted of the State President, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Security,
the NDF Chief of Staff and the Heads of Service from the army, the Kriegsmarine,
and the Luftwaffe, plus whatever other ministers of state, military officers, or
specialists needed to be included.
In late March, there was one such meeting at the Air Defense Command in
Centralia, Washington. It actually did take place in a bunker, one which had been
built in order to monitor test launches of the Republic’s rocket-propelled V-3
Flying Bombs. The meeting site had been chosen because it contained a small
guest lounge inside it that looked like somebody’s oak-paneled basement rec room,
with a working fireplace: the Northwest in late March was still cold and wet. This
afternoon the officer’s mess had sent round a large tray of sandwiches and an urn
of coffee, and eight men sat on sofas and armchairs in a haze of smoke that would
have gotten all eight of the participants severe prison time in the United States,
since tobacco was completely prohibited now in the Land of the Free and the
Home of the Brave. In addition to Morgan, Leach, and Basquine, there was
President Henry “Red” Morehouse; Security Minister Frank Barrow, who was the
longest-serving cabinet minister in the same position; Defense Minister Carter
Wingfield; the General of the Army, Billy Jackson, and Colonel Jeffrey Garrison
from Combined Military Intelligence.
“How’s it looking?” asked Red Morehouse hopefully, opening the meeting
in mid-munch. “Any chance we’ve misread the signs, that we’re just paranoid and
overreacting about all this?”
“I’m afraid I still have to agree with Colonel Garrison’s assessment, Red,”
said John Corbett Morgan grimly. “Looks like this time they really are coming.”
“Well, we all knew that someday they would,” said Morehouse sadly. “And
yet somehow I’d always hoped against hope … God damn them all to hell!” he
suddenly shouted angrily. There was a short silence. “I apologize, gentlemen. That
wasn’t helpful. Tell me what we know so far.”
“We have a name, Mister President,” said Colonel Garrison. “They call it
Operation Strikeout.”
“They don’t see the obvious double edge in that?” asked Morehouse with a
grim chuckle. “What if they’re the ones who strike out?”
“They seem confident they won’t, sir,” said Garrison soberly.
“Yeah, they’re confident, all right,” confirmed Morgan. “Goddamned
arrogant, in fact. Well, they always were. The tech warfare boys are now hacking
and tapping every satellite and computer server they can, we’re accumulating a
mass of ground-level intelligence off field agents from both CMI and WPB, and
they all tell the same story. This is it. We just don’t know exactly when and exactly
how, although a very nasty picture is shaping up.”
Garrison nodded. “Training and preparation at a dozen bases from Fort
Bragg to Fort Sam Houston, from Fort Riley to Huachuca and Castillo del Pueblo
in Aztlan, a number of small and apparently insignificant troop movements on
various pretexts that always seem to slide in a general northwesterly direction,
materials and supplies and support services being moved and concentrated in
certain areas, big consignments of weapons and ammo and equipment churned out
of the defense contracting factories and vendors, gasoline and diesel fuel being
stockpiled, all kinds of secret meetings and coded communications and lights
burning late in the Pentagon and across Washington, D.C. in both the literal and
figurative sense. A whole pattern of activity that can’t be explained away. Stuff
they really seem to be trying to keep secret, like the degree to which they’re
beefing up the Canadian highway system parallel to the NAR border. They’re now
using the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stay on schedule with the construction,
with the men dressed in tattered civvie overalls and all their bulldozers and
vehicles painted bright fire engine red. Trying to pretend they’re ordinary
Canadian road crews, eh?”
“How many troops do they figure to move through Canada against us, and
where do we think they’ll strike south?” asked Billy Basquine.
“We figure at least one hundred and fifty thousand, sir,” replied Garrison.
“Three full army corps, including at least two armored divisions and one airborne
division to jump in ahead of them and secure key points in the Kalispell and the
northern Idaho Panhandle area. Then once their beachheads are secure, they’ll
move south to Boise or west to Spokane.”
“Do they really think they’re fooling us?” asked Morehouse, shaking his
head in wonder. “Frank, are you getting any chatter from La Cesspool Grande that
indicates just what the hell they think they’re doing? Why now? Why not ten years
ago when we were newborn and couldn’t possibly have defended ourselves against
a full-scale invasion?”
“A number of factors were in play back then,” said Barrow. “The United
States was in utter turmoil, remember, reeling from defeat after defeat. First there
was the violent loss of the Northwest, then the quasi-legal loss of the Southwest
when Chelsea folded like a lawn chair in exchange for the votes of six Hispanic
senators in her impeachment trial, then the loss of their oil empire, and finally the
loss of the very fly-blown jewel in Zion’s crown itself, the so-called Second
Holocaust when Israel went down. Plus they lost the only really strong leader they
had, Hillary Clinton, when our guys went all loup-garou in that hotel in Denver.
The Sea Hag’s sudden demise left America rudderless for a while, which was good
for us. It’s taken Wallace almost eight full years to get the country stabilized and
returned to some semblance of normality.
“The American military was in even more terrible shape than some of us
remember it back in the day when we were kicking doors in Tikrit or chasing Mad
Maxes in Libya or whatever we all did,” continued Barrow. “It took time for the
U.S.A. to pull itself together, and let’s give him his due, that nutless wonder
Hunter Wallace managed to give it more than a lick and a promise. Through a
razzle-dazzle combination of charisma, bribery, and backstabbing, Wallace’s One
Nation Indivisible movement and his so-called national unity government have
gotten all the other Amurrican shitheads from across the spectrum, everybody from
the Delmar Partman Society on the neocon right to Hillary’s Heirs on the loony
liberal left, to pull together in their common interest and make sure the United
States of America didn’t completely fall apart, as it most likely would have if left
to its own devices. Now Wallace wants re-election. He’s already had his two
regular terms, and he’ll get his Congressional resolution suspending the TwentySecond Amendment just like Hillary did. He’s pulled the country away from the
brink, and what’s left of the U.S.A. has now returned to a faint semblance of the
old time of abundance, with massive inflation, true, but at least good enough to
keep up appearances. It won’t last, though, and Wallace knows it. America still
doesn’t manufacture hardly anything it needs, nobody has any real jobs any more,
and the U.S. dollar is now essentially worthless because the régime keeps the
printing presses over at the Federal Reserve running night and day. Inflation in the
U.S.A. is starting to approach Zimbabwe standards. His mortgage moratorium,
which the pasty little bastard copied from us by the way, wrecked the banks to the
point where he had to pump them up with the Federal Reserve’s printing presses
for the umpteenth time.
“Now gas is twenty-one dollars a gallon in the States, and a loaf of bread is
fourteen bucks. Wallace saved a lot of people’s homes by shitcanning their
crushing mortgages, true, but in most of those homes these days, the fridge is
empty. Even if meat wasn’t banned now in the States, nobody could afford a pound
of hamburger in inflated dollars. The economy is set to crash again, worse than it
did in 2009, and it could happen any time now. Wallace urgently needs a rabbit to
pull out of a hat, and it’s time he fulfilled his last and ultimate campaign promise,
recovering the lost states of the Northwest, so people will be so busy cheering that
they won’t notice the fact that the American economy is finally, at long last, about
to go down for the count. He needs to do it before the ONI convention in August,
or at least look like he’s doing it, with an ongoing military campaign. Add to that
the presence of three million Israeli Jews who have all been given automatic
citizenship right off the jumbo jet from the burning ruins of Tel Aviv, and who are
screaming for revenge, and I think we can see why he’s decided to go ahead and
make his move.”
“John, what kind of preparations are they making now, that we know of?”
asked Carter Wingfield.
“The thousand or so Chinese helicopters that they slipped into Aztlan, or
tried to slip into Aztlan without our knowing about it, are now being dispersed all
over the northern counties of California and Nevada, to small airfields and forward
military bases they may think we don’t know about,” said Morgan. “Those Taipans
have a long range, and they can strike pretty much anywhere up and down the
western seaboard and most of the eastern interior as well. Worse still, we have
received confirmation that at least six American aircraft carriers and their escorts
of destroyers and frigates are now converging on the west coast of North America
out of their bases in Hawaii or coming up from the Panama Canal, ultimate
destination unknown. Our crystal ball boys like Jeff here think they’ll be
assembled into a naval task force and then head north.”
“Christ, it’s not going to be a seaborne invasion, is it?” asked Morehouse.
“They planning on hitting us from every angle?”
“Maybe we ought to put Zack Hatfield on coastal defense and see if he can
pull off another Battle of Sunset Beach,” said General Billy Jackson with a smile.
[See The Brigade.]
“No, the Americans don’t have the troops for that, Mister President,” said
Colonel Jeffrey Garrison. “Remember back twelve years ago, when Chelsea
Clinton was facing impeachment after Longview? One of the trade-offs she was
forced to make to survive, in addition to agreeing to the establishment of Aztlan,
was that the United States abolish the draft for the second time since World War
Two. It was a politically popular move and also an astute one. The simple fact is
that the United States of America is a society that no longer dares to conscript an
army. They don’t let civilians have guns any more, and the power élite aren’t too
thrilled with the idea of millions of draftees of all colors and weirded-out mindsets
learning to use them. Too many of the patchwork of minority and special interest
groups they have to draw on are of dubious loyalty. They don’t trust white
conscripts because they might be secretly sympathetic to the Northwest Republic,
they don’t trust Hispanic draftees because they’re probably secretly loyal to
Aztlan, and they don’t trust the blacks because, well, nobody trusts niggers with
guns, just on general principles.
“The upshot of it is that we’re facing an enemy military which is much
smaller than it was twenty years ago at the height of the Oil Empire, higher quality
and better trained to be sure, but at least they can’t overrun us with a mass horde of
twenty million cannon fodder like they were Persians or Chinese. We believe that
the entire American combined invasion force will number somewhere around four
hundred thousand men, including the naval attack group and their air force, and in
addition there may be as many as half a million Mexicans attacking from
California and Nevada in the south, but the Hispanic troops are very much inferior
by way of arms and training and morale.”
“That’s still almost a million men invading our country. Any possibility of
active Canadian participation?” asked Wingfield.
“Maybe, but their army has never been that big, and they may try and sit this
one out until we counterattack into Canada,” said Garrison. “On the upside, I think
there’s no question that we can win this. For one thing, during the first stages of
the war, we’re fighting defensively on interior lines, and the perceived wisdom is
that an attacking force needs to outnumber the defenders by at least four to one to
have any hope of success. Either that or have some extreme technical or logistic
advantage, which with the Americans for the past century has traditionally been
overwhelming air superiority. If Bluelight pans out, the Americans will lose that in
the first forty-eight hours. On our side, the population of the Republic is now up to
around twenty-one million people, many of them refugees from the United States
and other politically correct countries who remember what life under PC was like,
and who understand what it will mean for them and their families if we’re
conquered. The Republic is a nation of soldiers. If we mobilize our entire active
reserve and everybody who can hold a rifle, from the Civil Guard to the B-Specials
to the Young Pioneers, we can field almost five million combatants. We’ll have the
bastards outnumbered, and we’ll be on interior lines.”
“And they will have almost all the high-tech weapons systems and gadgets,
like we’ve never been able to afford to acquire,” sighed Carter Wingfield. “If
Bluelight can’t bring down those damned jets from where they hide in the sky at
thirty thousand feet, then it will be World War Three against World War One.”
“They will be counting on their high-tech toys to give them the edge, yes
sir,” agreed Garrison. “But remember, we have some tricks up our own sleeve, like
Rotfungus and Bluelight, and I’m convinced both of them will work. We have the
Sunburn missiles to deal with their naval assault force. Plus we have enough V-3s
to drop some nasty choky stuff on California that will disincentivize the beaners
real quick. Not to mention the fact that the people of the Northwest Republic have
lived free and white for over a decade now, and they’ve acquired a taste for it. I
know part of General Barrow’s remit as Security Minister is to keep track of the
national mood for the government, and I don’t know what he will say, but my
guess is that the Americans will find themselves invading a very large country with
a well-armed and very pissed-off population, who will fight to the death rather than
return to the slavery and the poison that was the United States. I don’t mean to go
all mystical on you here, gentlemen, but this will be a war of the human spirit
against the machine, and I’m just spiritual enough to believe the human spirit will
triumph. It’s going to be a bloody mess, comrades, but we’re going to win.”
“Unless that lunatic Wallace decides to nuke us when he sees he’s losing,”
said Leach sourly.
“Or unless the ching-ling-dings decide to send something more than
helicopter and jet fighter pilots,” said Basquine.
“Any chance the Chinese might try to get involved with a major ground
force commitment?” asked Morehouse.
“No chance, Red, we’re certain of that,” Barrow told the group. “For one
thing, the Celestials may be inscrutable, but they aren’t stupid. They saw how
America got bogged down in foreign conquests when they went into lands where
they were never meant to be, and they don’t want the same thing happening to
them. Nor do the enemy want them here. The Triple Alliance of America, Canada,
and Aztlan, as we have named them, think they can take us on their own, and none
of their governments are nutty enough to invite a major Chinese ground force into
North America. They know once that happens they’ll never be able to get rid of the
chinks. They remember what happened when America kept invading Muslim
countries and staying, staying, staying for decades on end.”
“So why the naval task force, if not to invade?” asked Morehouse.
“Air support from the carriers for the three-pronged ground invasion we
think is coming, to try and destroy our manufacturing and infrastructure and
population centers along the old I-Five corridor,” replied Morgan. “Looks like
they’ll be sending troops against us from Aztlan in the south, from the east through
Montana towards Missoula, and from Canada in the north, down into Idaho or
Montana, or both. Plus airborne drops all over the country on the first day to secure
crucial points.”
“Not go long and slash straight down from Vancouver towards Seattle?”
asked Morehouse. “The would seem to be a logical fourth prong to an invasion.”
“We don’t think so, sir,” said Garrison. “For one thing, they simply don’t
have enough combat troops. For another, they’re afraid we will retaliate against
Vancouver. Prime Minister Simoneau is very twitchy about that possibility. The
tell on this is that they’re not rebuilding and reinforcing the roads all the way into
B.C. Our prognostication at the moment is they will concentrate their naval air
assault on Seattle and Portland and points west of the Cascade mountains, to try
and bomb us back into the Stone Age, as they like to put it, and the northernmost
strike force will cut down east of the mountains towards Coeur d’Alene and
Kalispell, then maybe try and do some kind of convergence with the eastern
invasion force against Boise.”
“Why not Wyoming first?” asked Leach.
“We think that will come in the second wave, so to speak, once hostilities
have begun,” said Morgan. “Wyoming has always been the Republic’s hinterland,
our own odd man out. Kind of a frontier preserve. Very hard, old-fashioned and
independent people. The Party minds its own business out there and they tolerate
the Tricolor over the post offices, that kind of live-and-let-live thing. Wyoming
folks understand the need for national service perfectly, they agree with it as good
for young people’s character, and we’ve had less trouble with draft-dodging out of
Wyoming than anywhere else, but beyond that we’ve walked softly out there and
let the cowboys roam the range, and I think we’ll find that will pay off now that
trouble’s coming. The cowboys don’t want to go back to the bad old days any
more than anyone else in this country does.
“As to the invasion, Wyoming sort of juts out there on the map, and it looks
like a vulnerable appendage that can be severed from the Republic, true, but our
war gamers believe that for the Americans to concentrate a major initial attack on
Wyoming would be mistake, and they understand that. They don’t want to lop off a
limb, they need to go for the vitals right away. It’s a big place, with an implacably
hostile population and terrain that make it ideal for guerrilla warfare, almost like
America’s Afghanistan. It would be very easy for the first wave invasion force to
get bogged down out on those plains, far from any of their major objectives.
Trying to come through Wyoming would increase the distance they have to travel
to reach the major eastern cities. Most likely they’ll try to roll up Wyoming in a
second wave of less than front-line troops, maybe use National Guard and these
Operation Chain Link baboons, once they’ve captured their major objectives
elsewhere in the country.”
President Morehouse spoke. “Getting back to naval defense, Admiral Leach,
can we do anything about this American armada that will be coming in at us from
the Pacific?”
“Depends on how far out to sea the carriers are when they launch their
aircraft, Mr. President,” said Leach. “My guess is that will be fifty miles, at least.
They’re leery of our shore batteries; our Russian friends have given us enough
Yakhonts missiles on mobile launchers to make them skittish. We can and we will
try and get at them with our missile destroyers, with TAC boats, and U-boats, and
punchies, and everything else we’ve got. But even with our souped-up marine
engine technology, sea travel is a lot slower than air, and they’ll know we’re
coming. Our navy will have to slug it out with their ship-based copter gunships and
dodge surface-to-surface missiles, and once we get close there’s the chain guns and
computer-directed guns that can hit anything on the surface with pinpoint
accuracy. Fortunately, we’ve spent the past twelve years concentrating on quantity
rather than quality, so while we don’t have any battleships or carriers or much of
any kind of a blue water fleet, we’ve got six Sunburn-packing missile destroyers,
over two hundred TACs, fifty-four U-boats, and about eighty punchies.”
“Punchies?” asked Jackson.
“Small, fast hydroplane boats carrying a three-man crew, and one stubby
little Nova missile with an effective range of five miles that can breach up to 18
inches of armor plate and hits with a concussion that can also blow out the
watertight compartments on most known vessels, including in my opinion an
aircraft carrier if they hit her in the right place,” explained Leach. “Kind of a
nautical version of the old NVA shoot-and-scoot. Zip in, slam a missile into the
enemy’s side, zip out, back to base or the supply vessel and load another missile,
repeat. They’re light and very fast, and if only a few of them can get close enough,
they can wreak havoc. Get a good square hit on the waterline of a destroyer or even
a frigate with one of those Novas, and she’s off to Davy Jones’ locker in ten
minutes. Trouble is getting close enough. Their hulls are mostly fiberglass, and
they’re unarmored. We deliberately sacrificed everything to speed and mobility
and that one hellacious punch, hence the nickname. Plus their range is short.
They’re purely for coastal defense against just this kind of situation, but we really
need for the enemy fleet to get in as close as we can lure them, to cut the time and
distance necessary to deploy our vessels.”
“Sounds like what we’ve done with the Songbirds and Starfighters,”
commented Basquine. “Don’t even worry about standing up to the big boys on the
block, just a lot of small craft that can move fast, hit hard, and then escape and
evade. Can the TAC boats take down a carrier?”
“The Torpedo Assault Craft? Absolutely, once again with the proviso that
they can get within effective range,” Leach assured them. “That’s the rub.
Depending on how many jets and helicopter gunships the Luftwaffe can let us
have, we will have some air cover against enemy copters, but we know you’re
going to be stretched thin, Billy. And there’s just not too much we can do about
missiles and fighter jet attacks. Mr. President, the best contingency plan we have
been able to come up with for a scenario like this is to let the enemy fleet get as
close as possible to our shore, then we swarm them like a pack of piranhas, all of
us, so that we will overwhelm their radar and chain guns and missile defenses and
at least some us can get close enough to stop them. We have the firepower to sink
those ships, if we can just bring it to them. Piranhas are small, but they have very
sharp teeth, and enough of them can strip a man or a cow to the bone.”
“One mass suicide mission and then that’s our whole navy gone?” demanded
Morehouse in horror.
“If that’s what it takes to stop those carriers from launching bombing
missions against our cities and our children, yes sir,” said Leach.
“There will be no Hamburgs or Dresdens here, Mr. President.”
“General Basquine, will the Songbirds conceivably be any good against the
carriers?” asked Morehouse.
“Sir, the Songbirds are tactical ground support aircraft, tank-killers and antitransport hunters,” said Basquine. “Their purpose is to make sure any enemy army
invading the Northwest Republic does so on foot after the first 48 hours or so.
They’re prop jobs, since we could never afford any significant number of jets,
based on the old German Stuka but twin-engined, plus some refinements of
twenty-first century technology we’ve added. The Songbirds are fast as hell from
the viewpoint of anybody on the ground, but slow as molasses to a computerized
radar fire-control system. They’re very maneuverable, which is good for dodging
ground fire and evading enemy radar, but I have to recommend against sending
them on long flights over the ocean where there is no place to hide and no place to
evade radar and satellite surveillance. In fact, if Rotfungus can’t take out the
enemy satellite system, then we’re going to be royally screwed. The Songbirds are
nimble when flying low to the ground, like I said, but they’re still tortoises
compared to F-15s or F-22s, and they can be easily tracked from space. Like
Admiral Leach’s missile and torpedo boats, range and armor were sacrificed to
speed and maneuverability and one big punch. Our Valkyrie helicopter gunships
we must have to slow the enemy ground advance. The Republic will be fighting on
three huge fronts, and there simply aren’t enough of the Ladies for that, never mind
a pitched battle at sea where they will be knocked out of the air like pigeons by
computer-controlled chain guns.”
“Okay, now we get down to the nitty-gritty,” said President Morehouse.
“Our three we-hope-to-hell-they’re-secret weapons. First off, how does it look on
Rotfungus, John?”
Morgan nodded. “Technical Warfare Division and Doc Doom himself assure
me it can be done, that the virus will work and it will take out the entire American,
Chinese, Japanese, European, and old Israeli spy satellite system all at once and
about half the world’s communications along with it, plus fucking up their ground
control servers like a dog’s dinner. That will leave only the Russian orbital
communications network intact, as well as our own few Lazarus Birds, so we cross
our fingers and hope that Big Bear decides to stay mellow and not sell us out to
whatever desperate and extravagant deal the Americans offer them for use of their
eyes in the sky. But it’s kind of like swallowing gasoline and then a lit match and
blowing yourself up. Spectacular trick, but we can only do it once. Any attempt at
a test run for Rotfungus beforehand will alert the Americans to the fact that we
have the virus, and their cyber-geeks will have time to work up countermeasures.”
“Not to mention the fact that if the Russians won’t allow us access to their
satellites, we will be almost as blind as the Americans, even with our handful of
Lazarus Birds,” said Morehouse with a sigh.
“Will Moscow dare to take our side openly?” asked Jackson.
“Big Bear has been of immense help over the past twelve years, for which
they have been well compensated in Northwest paper and pulp, Northwest
manufactured products, Northwest booze, Northwest marijuana and Northwest
meat and grain which they have then sold on to other countries to maintain their
position as a food-producer,” said Morehouse. “To what degree all of those things
earn us actual military assistance in a time of existential crisis has always been a
very obscure point which we have been unable to get the Bear to clarify.”
“Why not take down every damned satellite in the sky no matter who it
belongs to, rather than let anyone use it against us?” asked Leach.
“That idea has been floated, Admiral. We may have to go that route if it
looks as if our Russian friends are turning two-faced on us, but Russia was the first
country to recognize us out of only four in the whole world to do so thus far, they
have been of serious material help to us and comported themselves as friends, and I
don’t think we need to kick them in the balls without provocation. The Republic
will need all the friends we can get. Now for the most important maybe of all.
Carter, what’s the story on Bluelight?”
“Same as Rotfungus,” said Wingfield. “Joe Cord assures me it will work like
a charm, but then a man who habitually refers to God as an esteemed senior
colleague doesn’t strike me as having a too pragmatic point of view.”
“Yes, I know, Doctor Cord’s ego tends to cast Mount Rainier in the shade on
sunny days,” responded Morehouse dryly.
“Well, he did at least refer to the Almighty as a senior colleague,” replied
Wingfield sourly. “To give Cord due credit, there’s no question that the Bluelight
plasma weapon works, and it will bring down an aircraft. It works in the lab, and
the prototypes worked in the few tests we’ve been able to do out in the Olympic on
propeller-driven drones, on nice cloudy days when we hope to hell the satellites
couldn’t pick up on what we were doing. But short of bringing down an Air
Northwest liner, we’ve never been able to test it out on jets at high altitude. The
tracking and fire control unit works on the simulator. As risky as it is, we’ve fired a
few test beams into the stratosphere, and the instrumentation shows they can reach
45,000 feet with only a ten percent power loss, which will destroy any plane or
missile the Americans can throw at us like a mosquito in a bug zapper, if only we
can hit the damned things. But you’re talking about hitting an aircraft moving
miles above the earth at anything up to twice the speed of sound, probably doing
evasive maneuvers and possibly equipped with Stealth radar cloaking, with a
plasma particle beam the diameter of a pencil. The key is the radar tracking and
targeting unit. Does it work? The only way we’ll know is when these bastards
make their move. If the bombs fall on us, then it didn’t work.”
“Won’t the American planes’ onboard defenses lock onto the Bluelight’s
radar signal and hit the unit with a missile?” asked Jackson.
“That’s why each battery consists of three projectors mounted on separate
vehicles,” explained Wingfield. “One to fire on the attacking aircraft, one to take
out retaliatory missiles, and a third weapon as backup to either one as needed.”
“How many batteries are ready for the field?” asked Morehouse.
“Two hundred or so,” said Wingfield. “Just barely enough to cover our
major urban areas and other potential targets. If we really do have until June, we
can double that number by then with our crash program.”
“Air Defense is starting the next training intake tomorrow, in fact, right here
in Centralia,” put in General Basquine. “All hand-picked men who will be
confined to base until they’re through and they have been deployed to army and
Luftwaffe posts around the country, ready to roll when we get the word that the
balloon has gone up.”
“Keep me posted down to the last detail, Bill,” said Morehouse. “Finally, the
V-3s and the gas and bio warheads?”
“Olene, Lakeview, Cave Junction, and Siskiyou have about one hundred
Type One V-3s each, and can fit phosgene, mustard gas, or sarin warheads on your
order, Mr. President, as well as a small number of anthrax warheads,” said Carter
Wingfield. “Plus a simple HE warhead loaded with Semtex. You can cram a lot of
Semtex into a thousand-kilogram warhead, if all you want to do is make a big hole
in the ground in Sacramento. They need at least twenty-four hours’ notice so they
can get the warheads fitted and prepare the platforms for firing.
“For much the same reasons as apply to the naval and air forces, i.e.
overwhelming them with low-tech in sheer numbers before they can get their hightech toys focused, I recommend that once the invasion commences you order an
immediate launch of all the rockets from those four platforms I just named. Type
Ones are relatively simple, and by the standards of most modern weapons systems
they’re affordable to manufacture, given our military budget, at least. But they’re
slow and vulnerable. The Mex have no air defense system worthy of the name, but
we have to assume that the Americans or the Chinese will give them some kind of
cover, possibly from that naval fleet offshore, Patriots or some other kind of antiaircraft system, or F-15 and F-22 jet fighters that could knock the V-3s down out
of the sky like badminton birds. A mass launch would mean more chance that
enough will get through to cause serious enemy casualties. Another reason is that
those stations are right down on the border, to get as close to their targets as
possible, and if the Aztecs move fast enough they will be overrun pretty quickly.
The main base at Crater Lake has over five hundred rockets, including one hundred
and twelve Type Twos which can hit Los Angeles.”
“These people are coming to destroy our nation and kill and enslave our
children,” said Morehouse. “We have done nothing to them except demand the
right to live among our own kind in our own land, the same demand they
themselves made of the United States twelve years ago. But they refuse to accord
us the same right, they want to take what we have, and that has been going on for
way too long already. So they’re going to suffer. These weapons won’t be
decisive—hell, we can’t even hit any substantial non-white target in the United
States with them, their range is so short and they’re so inaccurate—but they will
make sure that if this Republic perishes from the earth, we will take a lot of
mestizos with us, and if we survive we will make an example that will deter them
from ever trying anything like this again. I know there are whites remaining in
California as well, but if they’re still there after twelve years and they have not
come to our own racial Homeland then I assume they’re nothing but liberal shits
who love diversity so much they can damned well die in it. The minute the first
Mexican soldier sets foot across that border, I’m giving the order.
“Each forward firing base will lay half their weapons on San Francisco, so
we can eradicate as many bugger boys as possible in addition to mestizos, and the
other half will drop on Sacramento so we can hopefully take out as much of their
government as we can, including those fucking white traitor politicians in the
Partida Criollo. All the Type Twos from Crater Lake head for Los Angeles, and
never mind niggers in Compton or mestizos in East L.A. They’re just cockroaches
and their species is immortal; we’ll never get rid of them all. Insofar as the V-3s
can be aimed, which I understand isn’t very accurately, I want them aimed at
Hollywood, Malibu, Santa Monica, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, and Fairfax, so we
can take out as many goddamned movie stars and Israelis and general Jews as we
can. Carter, you and General Basquine come and see me tomorrow at eleven a.m.
and we will work out the exact firing and targeting protocol. I also want to see if
we can double our stock of both classes of V-3 Flying Bombs by D-Day and set up
a couple of more forward firing platforms, maybe even with some Type Twos so
we can drop a little death on Fresno and San Diego as well.”
After the meeting broke up, Morehouse indicated to Frank Barrow that he
should stay behind. “Frank, is there anything new on Operation Belladonna?” the
president asked.
“I spoke to Charlie this morning before I came down,” said Barrow. “The
special handler his section recruited has completed his crash course at SoI and he’s
in Missoula now, conferring with the girl’s family, the ones who remained in the
Republic after Longview. They’ve agreed to cooperate, and assist in the first
contact. The special op has been provided with everything he needs by way of
documents, and he’ll be leaving for La Cesspool Grande tomorrow, although it will
take him a few days’ travel time to get him to the place they’ve selected for him to
pop onto the American grid in order to fit in with his cover identity. Once there the
D.C. station chief will brief him. He will probably try to make initial contact in
five or six days.”
“I hope this works out,” sighed Morehouse, shaking his head. “There is still
so much we don’t know, and most of it we can only get from somebody who is
deep, deep inside the belly of the beast. Most important of all, when the hell are
they going to hit us? We have to know in time to make sure we can get all the
reservists mobilized, and get the Bluelight batteries in place, and a hundred other
things we can’t do until we have confirmation, so we can kick in Plan Seventeen.
Forty-eight hours, Frank, that’s all I ask, forty-eight hours’ notice! God has given
us so much in the past seventeen years, since that day they came for Gus Singer
and his children and white men finally got up off their knees! Is it too much to ask
for one more sign of His favor? Forty-eight hours?”
***
That night in Missoula, Lieutenant Robert Campbell, Junior sat down to the
dinner table at his in-laws’ home on Randles Street in East Missoula. It was a quiet
and somber affair. The family knew that Bob was leaving the next day for an
undisclosed location for an indeterminate period of time, and that he would be out
of contact for the duration of that time. They knew it was something serious, but
that was all. His mother-in-law Lorna just thought it was a work thing for the
Guard, some kind of secret investigation. Robert was content to make that the
official story, but he wasn’t fooling anyone else.
Bob was lucky he had been able to come back for a brief visit at all; the
original plan was that he was to be shipped right out after he got through at the
School of Intelligence on Whidbey Island. At the last minute, it had been decided
to clue Clancy and Kevin Myers into what was going on, so that they could give
Bob personal messages he could deliver to Georgia when they met, adding to his
credibility and persuasive power. Bob was glad he could bring the Myers men in
on it, since he not only felt the loss of his childhood friend Peanut almost as keenly
as they did, but he owed the professor a big favor. It was at the university that he
had met his future wife, courtesy of Clancy Myers.
Eight years before, Bob had been a 19-year-old national serviceman just out
of the School of Infantry at Fort Matthews, sporting full corporal’s stripes
indicating he had maxed out the course. He was home on a week’s leave before
reporting to his permanent unit at the Oroville border crossing into Canada, where
he would spend the next sixteen months assisting fleeing migrants trying to Come
Home, hunting down infiltrators coming in to spy and to plant land mines, and
getting gloriously drunk in the NCO’s mess. Like most young men in a uniform,
Robert wanted to show it off, and so he had swaggered over to the university to see
his brother-in-law, the Chancellor Jason Stockdale, and his old friend Dr. Clancy
Myers. Kevin Myers, being almost a year younger, was just starting his own
military training at Fort Lewis himself, and so was absent that day.
Jason and Jason’s wife, Bob’s sister Jennifer, had treated him to lunch in the
faculty lounge and introduced him around to some new faces he didn’t know, and
then he had dropped around to Clancy Myers’ office to say hello. Clancy was now
head of the combined Culture and Literature Department, which included the study
of all the great writers and philosophers and poets of the Western canon and
heritage. He supervised a staff of over sixty academics and their teaching
assistants, taught two courses himself, and was always ready to sub in the
classroom any time another professor was ill or otherwise unavailable. Immersing
himself in his work had been his way of dealing with his daughter’s loss.
Bob was seated in Clancy’s office going over the usual stock in trade tales of
basic training and military derring-do with the older man when the door opened,
and in walked a young goddess, short and voluptuous, with a single blonde braid
down her back, wearing a long, flowing blue velvet dress. She was bearing a stack
of file folders like they were garlands to be laid reverently on a smoking altar in a
forest glade, instead of plopped into a middle-aged egghead’s in-basket. Robert
had leaped to his feet before the girl even looked at him, and when she turned her
ringed eyes of crystalline blue on him, Robert only barely managed to shut his
gaping mouth in time. Then he stared desperately at Clancy.
It had only been four years since the Revolution, but already mores in the
Republic were changing due to a combination of subtle and not so subtle pressure
and indoctrination from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education, and
also because of a nearly instinctive desire on the part of the people to get back to
the older and better ways, in every aspect of life. In the old American days, Robert
would have practically chased the girl down the corridor gabbling every suggestive
and flirtatious pick-up line in his repertoire, although actual touching would not
have been allowed at that point due to considerations of political correctness.
Depending on how she felt inclined toward her new admirer, she would either have
responded with more of the same, implying that a squelch session in the near future
was a distinct possibility, or else if not, she would have blown him off in the
language of a nigger bitch. Throw in some crack and negroid hip-hop and raunchy
tattoos, and that was the way such things were done in Amurrica.
But already social mores in the Northwest Republic were changing, going
backward with amazing speed, as a whole people desperately tried to climb back
on board the ship from which they had been hurled by Jews generations before. It
was now understood by young men and women of their age that they were
civilized white people, and not negroid animals in heat. Certain ancient courtship
rituals were now once again required, such as an actual introduction, before the
dance could begin. Simply walking up to a girl on the street or in the halls of a
university and trying to force an acquaintance now came under the quaint, archaic
description of an unwelcome advance, or even the century-old Guys & Dolls term
of a “mash.” It invited a slap from the young lady or a physical assault from any
nearby male relative. It also marked the young man who attempted it as a boorish
whigger, and probably ruined his chances with the girl for good. Without an
introduction, Robert was screwed at the starting gate.
Robert stood to attention, cleared his throat, and barely restrained himself
from yelling at Clancy to be introduced. The girl was lingering and she didn’t seem
averse, but they could hardly stand there like statues for minute after minute.
Clancy stared back at Robert owlishly, puzzled as to what he wanted, and then he
glanced at the girl and it hit him. “Oh, of course, where are my manners? Millie,
this is Corporal Robert Campbell of the Defense Force, Fourth Infantry Brigade up
at Oroville, or he will be. Robert, this is Millie, one of my part-time admin
assistants from the high school. She graduates in June and she’ll be doing her
Labor Service here at UM along with night school for a teaching degree, and so
she’s getting a head start on things now, after school.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Millicent,” said Robert, ridiculously trying
to sound like Rhett Butler.
“It’s Milada,” said the girl in a firm, pleasing contralto voice. “Milada
Horakova. It’s Czech. My family is from Chicago, and before that from Bohemia.
We Came Home in the year after Longview.” The girl extended her hand, which
Robert took. Hand kissing wasn’t on the Ministry of Culture’s cards yet, so he
merely gave it a quick firm clasp.
Clancy took in the situation at a glance. “Millie, I think you’re done for the
afternoon.” She wasn’t, but all three of them got it. “You can clock out now.”
“I need to get going myself, Doctor Myers,” said Bob. “Have you got a car,
Miss Horakova?” Many people in the Republic didn’t any more; not only was the
fuel situation still a little dodgy, but there was no longer any need for them in any
city or town because there was now safe, clean, efficient and nigger-free public
transport. “If not, I would be happy to give you a ride home.”
“Thank you, Corporal Campbell,” she said demurely. “Let me clock out and
get my coat. I’ll be back in a minute.”
After she had left, Clancy said, “So far as I know, she’s unattached, but she
brought her family to our Independence Day bash last October, and I should warn
you that she had a father and a brother both the size of tanks on either side of her. I
get the impression that trifling with that young lady’s affections is rather high on
life’s Not Recommended list. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that they had a
rough time with their Homecoming. Had to run the border with nothing but the
clothes on their backs. Other than that caveat, lay on, McDuff, and damn’d be he
who first cries hold, enough.” Before the week was out Bob had secured Millie’s
permission to write to her from Oroville, since good old-fashioned letters were
once again coming into widespread use in the absence of a nationwide internet email system which would be vulnerable to monitoring and hacking by the
Republic’s multifarious enemies. After several months of billet-douxs, on his next
leave Robert was formally brought before the family for inspection. Eli and Ed
liked the cut of his jib, and the rest was history.
Tonight at dinner, Eli and Ed Horakova were grim and Millie was restrained.
Even the children had caught wind of something going on in the outer world of the
adults. Bobby Three, Bob and Millie’s five-year-old son, stared at his father and
his mother with big eyes rather than his more normal practice of stuffing too much
food in his mouth and pelting his three-year-old sister with peas when he thought
no one was looking. Ida herself was just out of the high chair, seated on a plastic
box topped with a cushion so she could reach the table. She wasn’t eating much,
just kneading mashed potatoes with her fingers. Bob broke the silence by engaging
their Horakova cousins, Ed and Janette’s brood, with questions and comments
about school and eight-year-old Stan’s first marksmanship competition with air
rifles. “You’ll be shooting for the Pioneers in the nationals, Stash,” Bob told him
with a smile.
“I can’t join the Pioneers until I’m ten,” said Stanislas.
After dinner, Lorna and Janette took the children next door to Ed’s house to
watch Kappy the Kike cartoons on disc. “You went to see Kevin and Clancy Myers
this afternoon,” said Millie in the kitchen, as she cleared away the dishes.
“How did you know?” asked Bob.
“I was at the University for lunch with Tammy Myers. We thought you guys
would come down to the cafeteria, but you didn’t.”
“No, Kevin and Clancy and I had some things to take care of,” said Bob. “I
can’t talk about it, and neither can they, so please, don’t press any of them, Millie.
No one can talk about this, for real. One day I’ll tell you what it’s all about.” If I
make it, he almost added, but caught himself in time. “But for now it just has to be
like this. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not going to Seattle on a secret investigation for the police, are
you?” she asked, drying a dish.
“No,” he said. He owed her at least some smidgeon of the truth.
“I didn’t think so. This is something else, something that happened when
you were in Olympia for two weeks.”
“Again, I can only tell you I’m sorry, Mil. It is what it is.”
“Yes, I know,” said Millie with a nod. “I’ve known you for eight years now,
and I know you don’t lie and you don’t cheat. You met somebody in Olympia?”
“Yes,” he said. “There’s a reason why I have to be involved.”
“I can think of only one reason that would involve both you and the Myers.
You’re going Out There to try and find that girl? The one who was stolen, the Lost
Baby. Georgia. The one you and Kevin used to call Peanut.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Bob.
“You’re a Guardsman, you’re not in BOSS or any of the spook agencies, and
yet somebody like that tapped you for whatever this is. There must be something
special about you. Then you spend several hours huddled with the surviving
relatives of a Lost Baby, so she must have something to do with it all. She hasn’t
come back, or I assume she’d be here in Missoula and we’d be having her over to
dinner to tell us about all her adventures in the mouth of hell. So she’s still outside
the Republic. My guess is that for some reason that has suddenly become
important, you’re going Out There to collect her and bring her back.”
“Bring our little girl home, Bobby,” Clancy Myers had asked him that
afternoon, with tears in his eyes. “Please, bring our little girl home!”
“Dad, she’s not our little girl any more. Wherever she is, she’s a grown
woman now,” Kevin told his father. “God knows what she’s like after spending the
last twelve years growing up with Amber and her fruitcake grandmother scrubbing
her brain a nice bright pink. She may not want to Come Home, Dad, and we need
to be ready for that.”
“No, Kevin, you don’t get it,” Clancy had said, shaking his head. “You will
if Tammy’s next baby is a daughter, though. Sons grow up and become men, but
daughters are always your little girl, no matter what happens.”
“Damn, you should get your own detective shield,” said Robert now to his
wife, shaking his head in admiration. “Millie, straight up, keep all this to yourself.
Loose lips here can get people killed. No joke.”
“Including you?” asked Millie.
“I’m not going to get killed, honey. This is just something that has to be
done, and I’m the one who has to do it. I’ll tell you when time and place shall
serve, as Shakespeare said.”
Eli and Ed were harder to put off. “Good luck, son, whatever it is,” his
father-in-law told him, shaking his hand. “Any idea when you’ll be back?”
“Some months at least,” he said. “Millie will be getting a call every couple
of weeks from someone in Olympia just to tell her I’m okay, and it won’t be a lie.
They won’t tell her anything else, but they won’t lie to her, so if they say I’m all
right, she can believe it. If anything happens to me, she’ll be notified.”
“Millie and the kids will stay here with us while you’re gone.”
“Thanks, Eli,” said Bob.
“How likely is it that you’re not coming back at all?” the old man asked him
bluntly.
“I just swore to Millie, I plan on coming back,” said Robert. “I mean to. But
this is a delicate job, and anything could happen.”
“Anything to do with this latest invasion scare?” asked Ed, now as tall and
as powerful and dour as his father.
“What invasion scare?” said Robert. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Bullshit,” said Ed.
“If not, you’re the only one who hasn’t,” said Eli. “We do have a media in
this country, and you’re right, they don’t tell us much on some things, but what
they do tell us is straight up. Reservists being called up for extra training, including
Ed here, Tommy’s Pioneer troop at the high school getting sudden notice of a big
nationwide exercise in June. All kinds of programs on TV about preparedness,
stocking up on food and fuel and water. We can put two and two together. They
finally coming for us from Out There?”
“There’s always that chance,” replied Bob carefully.
“Yeah, sure. Okay, you can’t say. I get it.” Eli looked him in the eye. “All I
can do is give you my word, Bob, that if Amurrica comes for those kids, they’ll
have to go through me first.”
“And me,” said Ed.
Bob knew the story of the family’s flight from Cicero, and he knew these
strong and angry white men meant what they said. “Thank you both. That’s good
for me to know.”
Later on that night, Robert Campbell stopped by his sister’s house, the
Chancellor’s official residence on campus. Jenny was getting her own children to
bed, and then she came down and joined her brother and her husband in the living
room. The once pretty girl had become a mature and beautiful matron of strength
and dignity, and Jason was now entering an early middle age, which one
understood would be the prime of his life. “You know I always envied the hell out
of you two,” Bobby confessed to them, although he’d said it before. “The lives you
led with the NVA. I was just a kid at the time, and I know that like most kids I was
romanticizing danger and violence and terror into something it isn’t. I’ve picked up
that much in the cops. But now this thing has come up. I can’t tell you any of the
details, and I can’t tell you why I of all people drew the short straw and got picked
for this, but I guess you can figure out that I’m not going undercover to bust car
thieves or burglary gangs in Seattle. I’m going Out There, and it’s going to be
pretty hairy.”
“The Circus?” asked Jason.
“Yeah. I want to ask you two: how do you do it? How do you move and
function and fight and survive in it all? I imagine it must be like a diver at the
bottom of the sea in one of those old-fashioned suits with the brass helmet and the
air hose, having to watch every step and make sure you don’t get tangled or sucked
into anything, but I don’t really know what that means. How do you do it? How do
you get the job done and come back alive? I have a lot to come back to.”
“I know,” said Jason sympathetically.
“Any tips?” he asked.
“Rule number one,” said Jason. “Stay focused, as psycho-babblish as that
sounds. Always be aware of your surroundings. Know where you are, know where
everything is, know who is around you and where. When you go into a room, you
register every single person in it, every exit, every object. Watch people. Every
move they make, every word they say, every gesture, anything that marks them as
a friend or a foe, or in most cases neither, just part of the shifting scenery. But you
have to be able to tell the difference. You start drifting or daydreaming about
Millie and the kids and you’ll end up lying on a gurney dressed in orange with a
needle sticking in your arm, and they will never see you again.”
“Never forget who you’re supposed to be,” said Jenny. “Be that person. If
you’re supposed to be Cherry Cahoon the trashed-out crack whore, you’re Cherry
the trashed-out junkie. If you’re supposed to be Molly Hansen the soccer jock
chick, you’re Molly Hansen down to your socks and your cleats. If you’re
supposed to be Louise Benteen the junior U.S. Attorney, you swing that briefcase
right through the security check like you’re Louise and no one else.” Bob got the
impression she wasn’t just pulling names out of the air. “If you just put on an act, if
you’re just playing a role, you’ll forget your lines or slip up on a name or
something that Cherry or Molly or Louise should know, and some gun thug will
pick up on it.”
“Keep your weapons clean as a whistle with just enough oil so they will
function,” said Jason. “When you need it, you’re going to need it in a split second,
and a stoppage means death. Always carry a backup gun, something small like a
.380 or a .22 that will fit in an ankle holster or a pocket or even up your sleeve.
Don’t carry a knife unless you know what you’re doing, and you can use it without
a second’s hesitation.”
“Any time you get a chance to go to the bathroom, take it, whether you need
to or not,” Jenny told him. “Same thing with sleep. A revolutionary lives on cat
naps. No drugs to stay awake and don’t touch a drop of booze while you’re
working, which is always. Any of this sound helpful at all?”
“I guess,” said Bob. “I got all that in—well, I was taught. But mostly I just
want to know how you did it, year after year, without going nuts?”
The two of them were quiet for a bit. “Bob,” Jason finally said, “I’m not sure
how to put this, but—during those years, Jenny and I were both scared shitless
most of the time. We were scared of death, we were scared of prison and the
waterboard and the electrode and the Dershowitz needles, and above all we were
terrified that one of us would die and the other would have to live on, that this
house and this life and those kids upstairs would never be. But the one thing we
were never afraid of, not ever, was that we would lose. The NVA and the
revolution were part of history and we were part of the NVA and the revolution. It
was who we were, and we were that because we knew, we knew, that the survival
of our race was the will of God, and that so long as we did His will as best we
could, we would be sustained, and that someday it would be over, and the world
would be right again. When you know that in your soul, as we did, then once you
get Out There, you’ll know what to do.”
IX. Out There
(12 years and six months after Longview)
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically be
disqualified from ever doing so. - Gore Vidal
Lieutenant Robert Campbell sat on a wooden chair in a cramped office
overlooking a loading dock and the interior of a warehouse, just off Wilson
Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia. Cardboard cartons of cigarettes and cheap cigars
were piled in the corners. He was listening to his new boss scream threats and
obscenities into the phone.
Vinnie Skins sat behind a huge mahogany desk and scowled into the
videocam on the handset. He was a square blockhouse of a man and could look
menacing even over the phone. His brown hair was combed back over his head
into a ducktail with fragrant pomade, and his blue-scraped face and jaw reeked of
aftershave. Skins wore a $27,000 suit (at present inflated American costs)
underneath which was a pink silk shirt and blue tie, Gucci shoes in the $8000-apair region, and a huge diamond pinky ring. He finally calmed down a bit and went
on in a more reasonable voice. “Tony, look, you know I always liked you. You’re a
nice guy, you got a pretty wife, hey, I do like you. I like having all tings pleasant
about me, and I hate it when guys I like take advantage of my fucking good nature
like youse is doing now. But because I like you, I’ll make you a deal. You get me
four hundred pounds of pork chops, a whole side of beef, an’ twenny racks of lamb
by Friday, and you don’t send it in some piece of crap truck wit’ de refrigeration
busted so it arrives here thawed out, and I won’t peel de skin off your face like a
fucking onion. Don’t dat show how much I like you? Can’t say fairer dan dat, now,
can I? Now go fuck yourself.” He folded up the phone.
“Does Richie have to swear like that?” asked Campbell.
“Think of it as a foreign language you have to learn in order to communicate
with the natives,” said Major Vincent Cardinale of the War Prevention Bureau.
“Listen to the niggers on the street and on the tube, and imitate them. Blacks have
been setting the cultural and linguistic tone on the streets in this country for a long
time. Until you pick up the real rap, just throw a couple of shits and fucks into
every sentence, and you’ll pass. The Office tells me your Spanish is fluent?”
Bob had already learned that no reference was ever made on station to the
WPB or even to the Circus, as part of the operatives’ ingrained wariness against
the electronic eavesdropping from a dozen public and private agencies that was
everywhere in America. Out Here it was always just the Office. “Yes sir, although
it’s classroom variety. We read Don Quixote in school in the original Spanish, but
I can barely understand this gabble I’ve been hearing from all the beaners around
me since I crossed over.”
“Cervantes wrote in classical Castilian, the Spanish version of Shakespeare,”
Cardinale told him. “These mestizos around here speak pig-ignorant peasant
dialects from a hundred different localities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Some of them don’t even speak Spanish; they’re from so far out in the jungle, only
obscure little Paleolithic Indian dialects. You’re Chicago Irish from Bridgeport,
remember, so you won’t be expected to know more than a couple of hundred
words of pidgin Spanish, mostly swear words. When you’re dealing with beaners,
you can just throw in a few essays and vatos along with your shits and fucks.”
There was a knock on the door. “Getcha ass in here!” Cardinale yelled. The
door opened and a man and a woman came in. The man was tall and about forty
years old, with long blond hair and a drooping moustache both tinged with a little
gray, and a gold earring in his ear. He was wearing a blue overall with pleated
shoulders, a cloth belt with a silver buckle displaying a dollar sign, and expensive
shoes with pointed steel toes, the height of fashion for an edgy underworld player
type in America’s current quasi-negroid, media-fueled subculture. The woman
looked to be in her mid-twenties, with a hard face that might have been pretty if
she’d tried, and long auburn hair tied behind her head. She wore cut-off jeans and
sandals and a sleeveless gray sweatshirt. She had several tattoos on her arms and
legs, including a dove on one shoulder and an intricate depiction on her shin of
Jesus Christ giving the world the finger. She carried a small, holstered automatic
on her belt and the man’s overall bulged from the weapon he carried beneath it in a
shoulder holster rig.
Bob himself was wearing simple jeans, a T-shirt, and heavy work boots, as
well as several prominent new tattoos of his own, including an Irish shamrock on
one bicep, a dagger piercing a heart over the name “Lila” on his left forearm, as
well as minor bits and pieces of prison ink, but he had no weapon. The WPB
decided for him that the tats were necessary to his cover, and the technician-cumartist who decorated his body assured him that that upon his return, they would
come out of his skin after a series of treatments with a special solution. “This is
Duke, and this is Betsy,” said Cardinale as they sat down on the office sofa and
nodded to him. “Guys, this is Richie from Chicago, our new associate from the
home office. He’s here to take point on Belladonna.”
“I know I had to come in clean because of the airline security, but am I
supposed to be strapped?” Bob/Richie asked, nodding at the gun riding on the
girl’s slim, hard waistline.
“Nothing heavy, unless needed. I’ll give you a .380 junk gun to carry on the
street,” said Cardinale. “Since your cover is that you’re a legger, you’ll need a
piece for your deliveries, both for show and also in case some jonesing hufflepuff
or some other crew tries to jack your freight.”
“Huh?” asked Bob.
“In case some cigarette fiend who doesn’t have the two hundred bucks to
light up tries to rob you, or else some other hoods try for both your product and
your roll,” translated the girl.
Cardinale went on. “You’ll be servicing our crème de la crème route over in
the Green Zone, in order to bring you into contact with the subject, so you
shouldn’t run into that problem, but better safe than sorry. Guns are illegal, of
course, have been since the Schumer Act all those years ago, but everyone in
American cities ignores the law, and the cops have pretty much stopped bothering
to enforce it unless they want an excuse to hold you for something else, like they
more or less stopped busting people for a couple of joints back when marijuana
was still illegal. Usually these days, they just issue a citation and confiscate the
piece. Don’t worry too much about the D.C. cops finding it on you during a stopand-frisk. They would be surprised if one of Vinnie Skins’ crew wasn’t strapped.
Most likely, they’ll just write you a ticket, confiscate the gun, and then sell it back
to me. Unless somebody’s looking for a bigger taste, and then they’ll throw you in
the tank and make me come down and spread some lettuce around, but that
shouldn’t happen. I have formal arrangements with both D.C. Metro and the Park
Police, and I pay a pretty penny for our guys to do business with no hassles in the
Green Zone, so they should leave you alone once they come to know you. It won’t
be nearly as rough as if you were dealing in Virginia, and we stay out of nigger turf
in Maryland altogether, but we do occasionally have some trouble inside the Green
Zone with jumpers.”
“Jumpers?” asked Bob/Richie.
“What Betsy said,” explained Duke. “Hijackers. Guys from other crews who
jump you and try to rip off your butts, or your steaks, or sausage, or whatever
you’re holding.”
Cardinale picked it up. “Like any expanding business in a dynamic market,
we’ve got ongoing problems with a couple of other outfits, mostly the Lon Tran
Vietnamese mob from Falls Church, but they most likely won’t bother you in the
District. They can’t get the proper FLECs for the Green Zone and so they have to
sneak in, and usually they don’t go to the effort just to hassle our runners. Getting
caught in the ESMA without a Class A FLEC is a mandatory six months in a penal
factory, and Lon’s boys won’t risk a hiccup like that unless it’s something
important, which jacking a single legger isn’t.”
“Oh, by the way, Rich, here’s your own new alpha FLEC.” Duke took out a
plastic ID card and handed it to Bob. “Hang on to your old one for your trip Home,
but use this one while you’re here. You’ll need it for the Green Zone. I stopped by
Birdie’s on the way up here and I paid for it.”
“How much?” asked Cardinale, taking out a roll of bills.
“Thirty grand,” said Duke. “He says he has to raise his prices since he had to
shell out big for this year’s recognition codes twice, because DHS changed them
last month.”
“Jesus Christ! I know Birdie does the best work in town, but dat’s fuckin’
highway robbery,” said Cardinale, lapsing into Vinniespeak. He peeled some
$5000 bills off the roll, bearing Jimmy Carter’s picture, and handed the money to
Duke, who added it into his own roll of bills.
“What can I tell you?” said Duke with a shrug. “Everything costs at least
twice as much as it did this time last year, and that includes ID. Oh, by the way,
Rich, when you’re making your pickups and deliveries, be sure you carry your
cash in a roll, like this. Only amateurs carry a wallet, and you’re supposed to be a
long-time player. Anyway, with the inflation, most people have to carry more
money than they can stuff into a wallet anyway.”
“Roll, got it,” said Bob. He looked at the laminated plastic Federal Law
Enforcement Confirmed Identity Document, to give it the full nomenclature. FLEC
was now the American national ID system, but it was more than that. Your FLEC
was your driver’s license, your bank and credit card, and in most cities, it was
required by law to be the key to your home or apartment. Actual locks were
forbidden, in case the police or FBI needed to use their own master cards to get in.
The card’s memory chip contained all of a person’s medical records and
employment history, as well as their military and criminal record if any, whether or
not they were one of the few Americans now favored with a legal gun permit and
for what weapons? And of course it was also one’s legally mandated Global
Positioning beacon, so that the authorities could physically locate an individual any
time of the day or night. To be challenged by police and not be able to produce a
FLEC was a class C federal felony, and to be found in possession of a false one
like this meant serious time in prison or a privately run penal factory.
Not that any of it really worked. Probably no law in United States history,
with the possible exception of Prohibition, was more completely disregarded and
evaded by its remaining citizens than the Amended Real ID Act. There were
simply too many things that Americans wanted to hide, from a bogus resumé to
unreported income to an adulterous affair, for them to carry it all around with them
in their wallet or purse. Evading the FLEC card and its microchip had become a
kind of national sport, and so many people were doing it that despite occasional
draconian examples, it was simply impossible to impose credible punishment on
all violations. Anyone who surfed the internet could find dozens of ways to disable
one’s FLEC card, hack into the chip and alter the data on it, or re-program it to
show one location to the GPS satellite while the card and its owner were actually
somewhere else. And if they weren’t sufficiently tech-savvy to do it themselves,
there were hackers and forgers who specialized in monkeying around with FLECs.
Some even advertised in the Yellow Pages.
The bogus card Bob held in his hand showed his name as Richard Carroll,
and his birthplace as Chicago, Illinois. His current address, according to the card,
was an apartment in Arlington which was in fact occupied by a Malaysian couple
and their extended family. Robert’s WPB trainers back on Whidbey Island had
discussed his new identity with him, and it was decided to make him Richie Carroll
from Chicago because Bob had picked up enough stories, bits and pieces of
knowledge, and local color about That Toddling Town from his wife and his inlaws to fake it. His photo as Richie twinkled in special pixels for the various
electronic scanners and readers the card would be passed through. “This has my
whole rap sheet on it?” he asked curiously. “Or Richie’s rap sheet, I should say?”
“Yeah,” said Cardinale. “Eight or ten beefs, petty to middling, couple of
B&Es and disorderlies and car thefts back in Chicago in the days of your
uproarious youth, the rest of them possession charges. One bust for ten cartons of
Rothmans filters, mysteriously dropped down to four to get it below distribution
weight, which will build your cred for being mobbed up. One ADW just for
panache, when you shot a rival legger who was trying to jack a backpack full of
Macanudos off you.”
“Did I kill him?” asked Richie.
“No, just wounded him,” said Cardinale. “We don’t want to make you too
violent, or else the FBI or the Metro OCB might think I’ve brought you in for
muscle, and we want to keep Vinnie Skins’ crew as low profile and smooth as we
can, considering our high-class clientele. Young Richard is also showing one bust
for using a fake rabbinical ID claiming you were a Jew in order to buy legal kosher
brisket. Then comes your pièce de resistance. You did two years in the federal pen
at Allenwood for getting pulled over on the New Jersey turnpike driving a whole
truckload of chilled kosher chickens with a false end-user certificate to a licensed
Jewish delicatessen in New York, which it’s assumed you meant to sell under the
counter to certain mob-controlled chew-easies in New York. You refused to rat out
your boss, presumably me, Vinnie Skins, hence my offer of employment here in
the nation’s capitol once you got out. All of this will check out if the cops pull you
over and run your card. The cyber-whizz kids back at the Office have hacked into
all the necessary servers at DOJ and NCIC and the FBI, and you’ll show as up as
Richie Carroll.”
“You will,” said Duke. “I had Birdie run you himself on his own private rig
before I paid for the card, just to make sure. It’s good.”
“So all of you have these criminal records on your ID cards?” asked Bob. “I
know one doesn’t ask real names and real past details, but what’s on you guys’ rap
sheets? I mean, we’re supposed to be thick as thieves, literally. I could need it for
my cover. Who exactly are you supposed to be?”
“Fair enough,” said Cardinale. “In point of fact I really am Italian, but there
the resemblance between me and Vinnie Skins pretty much ends. No one knows
my real name or where I’m really from, except I’ll tell you I was born and raised in
the Homeland.”
“NVA, judging from your age?” asked Bob daringly.
“Yes,” said Cardinale briefly. “According to my FLEC card, I have a
criminal record dating all the way back to the age of fourteen in New Jersey, which
is ironic, since New Jersey is one of the few places on the continent I’ve never
actually been. Well, a stopover in Newark airport, once. Vinnie Skins is a lowlevel wiseguy who may or may not be a made member of the Atlantic City Cosa
Nostra family, no one’s quite clear on that. Six years ago, when they passed the
Healthy America Act, I spotted a cushy market peddling cancer sticks and stogies
down here in our indivisible nation’s capitol, and here I have been ever since. I am
known to be very well connected and the purveyor of fine smokables and
comestibles to some very distinguished clients indeed in Congress, the Pentagon,
the judicial branch, and the bureaucracy.”
“Not the White House?” asked Bob.
“Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania is a special case,” said Cardinale. “We can
get e-intercepts sometimes, but it’s a very hard nut to crack as far as getting
anybody into the West Wing goes. I’ll get into it with you later on.”
“How did you get the name Vinnie Skins?” asked Robert.
“Supposedly I was into hijacking furs in my younger days.”
“I’m a bad boy altogether,” said Duke. “All kinds of crimes of violence,
shootings and stabbings and one arson-for-hire thrown in for good measure. I’m
supposed to be the muscle in the outfit. Well, I am.” Bob was going to ask Duke if
he were ex-NVA as well, but decided not to push it. He was sure he knew the
answer in any case.
“Three guesses what I’m supposed to be,” said Betsy with an ironic smile.
“Plus a meat mule and leaf lady, of course. Duke and I are Vinnie’s street captains
for the Green Zone, and we’ll be the ones over there giving you a hand on a day to
day basis.”
“You don’t mind people thinking, uh, that about you?” asked Bob. “Even if
it isn’t true?”
Betsy laughed sardonically. “Hot damn, they really are raising a whole
generation of prudes back in the Homeland!” she said to Vinnie and Duke.
“Yes, I guess we are at that,” admitted Bob. “When was the last time you
were back?”
“Long time,” the girl said casually. “I’ve got registered sex trade worker on
my FLEC, and it accounts for my being almost anywhere, anytime, anywhere in
the Green Zone. I’ve been stopped in the corridors of Congress at two in the
morning and talked my way out of it by flashing my card and my baby blues, or in
my case my baby greens.”
“Don’t they ask who you’re there, uh, seeing?” asked Bob curiously.
“Nope,” replied Betsy. “They’re not allowed to ask, under the law. I can’t
even be made to tell in court. Courtesan-client privilege.”
“What?” said Bob. All three of them laughed.
“No, really, she’s not shitting you,” said Cardinale. “A few years ago an
elderly federal judge here in D.C. died in a working girl’s apartment of a coronary.
She and her pimp tried the old Dress-The-Corpse-And-Prop-Him-Up-Behind-TheWheel-Of-His-Cadillac trick, but they forgot about the security cameras
everywhere, they got caught on digital, and there was an unholy stink. All kinds of
sound and fury about the girl’s client list on her Blackberry and who got to see it,
was it public record, could the judge in the case seal the trial records, journalists
offering millions of dollars of bribes all over the place for the list or interviews
with the hooker, the whole insane zoo that breaks out whenever anybody in this
jaded and corrupt society scents sex and scandal. The power structure and the
media are always on the lookout for anything to distract the American people from
the sludge pump of their daily lives.” Cardinale shook his head in disgust, then
went on. “Anyway, without keeping you here until midnight, the nine Supremes
closed ranks with their errant brother in justice, and after a long dramatic roll of
sound and fury, they created something called courtesan-client confidentiality, so
prostitutes of both genders—excuse me, ‘sexual services specialists’—cannot now
be legally compelled to rat out their clients. It was a popular ruling in D.C., let me
tell you. Believe it or not, all this grunge is in fact somewhat relevant to your
mission, Rich, because courtesan-client privilege is what Hunter Wallace uses to
cover his own activities along that line and prevent any scrutiny of what he
actually does to his ladies in the sack, as well as a private personal services
contract with a bitch of a confidentiality clause. Wallace always pays his women
for their personal services, which is the accepted legal euphemism, and that keeps
his ass covered in every sense of the term.”
Bob was about to ask Betsy just how far she went using her peculiar cover in
order to get the job done, then realized it was none of his business. Instead, he
asked, “You said you were having trouble with other meat and tobacco dealers?”
“Yeah, those gooks in Falls Church,” said Duke. “About six months ago,
they jacked a truckload of spare ribs from us in McLean and killed the driver, but
we lit up one of their warehouses, killed the two guards on duty and cleaned them
out of a thousand pounds of beef and pork, as well as a hundred cases of Gauloises
and knockoff Chinese Camels and Marlboros. The Greater Capitol Area Crime
Commission stepped in and negotiated a truce, at their usual exorbitant fee, but it’s
held for the time being. We hit back hard enough to maintain our own street cred
and send the message we won’t be fucked with, but in view of our actual purpose
here, we had to cool it down.”
“We ended up having to pay the gooks a couple of million in compensation,
and I pitched a real bitch about it, ranted and raved and cursed like a good wiseguy
should, but we need this front and we don’t want a real gang war developing,”
explained Cardinale. “Bad for business. Both our businesses.”
Campbell looked down through the windows at the men unloading cases of
bootleg cigarettes from trucks, including several obvious mestizos. “How many of
those guys are with the Office?” he asked.
“None of them,” said Cardinale. “Those are all real criminals. You run into
any of them here or on the street, you say hello and act cool, but don’t get chummy
or hang with any of them. Vinnie Skins runs a protected operation, but that doesn’t
mean we’re not under intermittent surveillance by assorted law enforcement teams
with nothing better to do. This station has a number of Office operatives, but you
will only know a few of them as your mission dictates. As few as possible. If you
get lifted you can’t betray what you don’t know. I wouldn’t be showing you this
place if it wasn’t part of your cover and you wouldn’t be expected to know about
it, as do the cops and feds, of course. You will mostly deal with me directly, but if
I’m not available, you deal with Duke or Betsy, who have been briefed on the
reason for your presence here. They’re your backup in anything that might get wet,
or where you just need a hand with something. You will also meet a man we call
the Zombie Master. He’s a proper psychiatrist and psychologist, and he needs to
know all about the subject and your interaction with her, to make sure she’s
functioning and she isn’t going off the rails under pressure.”
“That’s assuming we can activate her and get her placed,” said Bob.
“That’s why you’re here,” said Cardinale with a wintry smile.
“I’m still not sure I get this whole idea of posing as tobacco and meat
smugglers,” said Robert. “I mean, shouldn’t you be trying to avoid undue attention
from the police?”
“We need some excuse to move around the streets unfettered and go into
neighborhoods where we couldn’t otherwise be,” said Duke. “By its very nature,
our real work is covert and it involves suspicious behavior on our part, and that’s
hard to conceal in the Green Zone, with spy cameras monitoring every square
meter of sidewalk. What better disguise than as buttleggers and beefleggers? What
better reason to appear on camera seeming furtive and trying to dodge the
surveillance than the fact that we really are engaging in illegal activity, except the
DHS in their all-seeing wisdom thinks they know us, that they know what illegal
activity we’re engaging in, and it’s one which is more or less socially acceptable.
In the 1920s during Prohibition, it was bootleggers. For seventy years after that it
was drug dealers, until they legalized most drugs.”
“Now it’s pork chops and ciggies,” said Betsy. “These shitheads always
have to be outlawing something, so they can have big police agencies with big
budgets to chase after it and lock a lot of people up in their prisons to be farmed
out to the corporations as cheap slave labor. When Mexicans won’t do, use
convicts. Been that way in America for over a century now.”
“When they see us on their cameras here, there, and everywhere, in some
government office building or at some soirée in Georgetown, the ZOG snoops
pigeonhole us as leggers slipping some high functionary a few T-Bones or
Cohibas, and they move on,” said Duke. “Same with Betsy here. They track her on
the cameras all the time, but they figure she’s just working, and if she makes house
calls in a government office building or shows up at certain parties, she’s just being
enterprising. This is Washington D.C., one of the few remaining places in the
Western world where power and money are concentrated in serious amounts.
Powerful and wealthy people have needs, and someone’s going to supply them,
legal or not.”
Cardinale chuckled. “It’s a basic rule of conspiracy: when you’re suspected
of something, try and make the evidence point to a lesser offense. Human nature
being what it is, you have more chance of being believed.”
“The problem is that everything in the Green Zone attracts attention,” said
Duke. “It’s designed that way, not even so much to stop wicked spies and terrorists
like us, but just to keep the damned niggers from Maryland out and keep them
from fucking everything up and making the place unlivable, as niggers always do.
The Green Zone and some of the D.C. suburbs are small, very wealthy, very white
and Jewish enclaves in a black and brown sea, but these are the people who keep
what’s left of the United States government functioning, the civil servants and
policy wonks and legislators and the whole range of business, technical and service
personnel needed to sustain them. The team of surgeons who keep the patient alive,
so to speak. The establishment needs them. If this privileged and empowered élite
is to keep on doing its job, it requires twenty-four-seven security monitoring to
keep the dedicated servants of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave from
getting butchered and served up in a cannibal feast, and I mean that literally. That
shit was going on last year up in Silver Spring.”
“Welcome to Hunter Wallace’s magical Surveillance State,” said Cardinale.
“The District of Columbia, the Green Zone as everybody calls it, is in fact
officially known as the ESMA, the Enhanced Security Monitoring Area. Back
around the turn of the century, Congress and all the senior bureaucrats got tired of
the long commute, sometimes from as far away as Baltimore and Fredericksburg.
They wanted to live within a short walk or ride to where they worked and their
gyms and favorite watering holes and their mistresses’ apartments. Trouble was,
other than a few areas like Georgetown and DuPont Circle, the District was a
dangerous and crime-ridden black jungle unfit for human habitation. Back in the
Nineties, the D.C. drug and street gangs were so savage they even scared off MSThirteen and the Triads. Then Clinton the First came in and they came up with the
long-term gentrification project, the idea of which was quietly to run the niggers
out of D.C. and whiten the place up. Needless to say, never was so much as a
whisper of the true agenda allowed to seep into the public media, although
everybody and his dog knew damned well what it was all about.”
“That’s the way the United States has operated for a century,” commented
Robert. “When necessary, things may be done for racial reasons, but never under
any circumstances must anyone ever admit what’s happening. Officially, race
doesn’t exist.”
Duke took up the story. “Long story short, over a period of several decades
they more or less traded the niggers Maryland in exchange for the District. Back in
the Nineteen Seventies, Prince George’s County and Bethesda and Silver Spring
were the poshest and whitest of the D.C. suburbs. Now they’re black-ruled, and
they’re the worst slums in the country. You’ve got extended families of fifty or
sixty niggers living in former suburban mansions, more if the mansion has been cut
up into apartments. The sewers and the electricity no longer work half the time,
and I won’t even try to describe how the area smells.”
“You think that’s bad, try Baltimore,” commented Betsy. “Some UN
commission reported that the quality of life in Baltimore is now statistically
equivalent to Sierra Leone.”
“That’s right, you had to go up there last year, didn’t you?” responded Duke
sympathetically.
“Yeah.” Betsy shuddered at the memory.
“When Hunter Wallace got into the Oval Office he knew that in order to get
done what he needed to get done, he had to keep the ruling class happy and safe,”
said Vince Cardinale. “Diversity and multiculturalism are all well and good in
theory, but in the real world people can’t do their best work for ZOG if they’re
constantly worried about getting mugged, burglarized, raped and murdered by
beasts of the field. Once again without any public acknowledgement that
something racial was going on, at Wallace’s direction the government fortified the
District of Columbia, making it the country’s largest gated community, which is
another old-fashioned circumlocution for lily-white safe area. It’s a common
phenomenon. What’s left of the United States of America now consists of a whole
series of Green Zones in major cities—I think the largest ESMA geographically is
in Houston’s American Zone, where all the Zionist Bible-thumpers are
headquartered. The D.C. ESMA is surrounded by a fourteen-foot corrugated steel
wall, topped with razor wire and electrified alarms.”
“Entry into the District is only through checkpoints,” Duke told him. “If you
don’t have the right card, you have to state your business at the checkpoint,
convince the cop on duty it’s legit, and they issue you a day pass. If you don’t
check out into Virginia or Maryland by seven p.m., then the cops come looking for
you, guided by the GPS on your FLEC card, and you’re in trouble.”
Bob remarked, “I remember reading in our North American history class in
school that there used to be an expression in the old South and in South Africa,
‘white by night.’ It was a safety measure. The kind of thing I don’t suppose
American students are ever taught these days.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that,” said Duke. “That’s what the District of Columbia
is now, white by night, and what all the Green Zones are, although there are a fair
number of techie and bureaucratic Asians who have Class A FLECs and Green
Zone residence permits as well. The régime considers certain skilled or connected
gooks to be honorary whites.”
“You need to know all this, Richie, because moving and operating in the
Green Zone like you’ll be required to do is like living in an aquarium,” Cardinale
told him. “You’re always on view, and virtually every move you make is watched
and recorded. Even in public restroom facilities, because the secret police know
that people tend to nip into the john for privacy to do things they shouldn’t. That’s
another thing they will never admit, not even by a whisper, but be careful any time
you have to go to the can over there. There is no place more certain to be
monitored all the time. It took us a lot of doing to get that alpha card for you, and
the money we paid Birdie just to make it was the least of it. We had to get an
allocated code to program into the chip before we could hack and re-program the
code in the server under your name. There are a limited number of those, and
getting a new code issued from scratch requires too much background work on too
short a notice. So we had to use someone else’s code, and make sure that person
never tries to cross into the Green Zone while you’re there, or else all kinds of bells
and whistles would be set off.”
“You mean a man died in order to get this card for me?” asked Bob, turning
it over in his hands.
“Yes,” said Cardinale.
“Don’t worry about him,” said Betsy casually. “He was an asshole.” Bob
glanced at her and put that remark away into the ever-expanding I-Don’t-Want-ToKnow file in his mind.
Cardinale continued. “Inside the District there are closed-circuit security
cameras on every street, every corner, every parking lot, inside every bar and
restaurant and store, in every public place and a lot of private ones that the DHS
has been able to find legal excuses to invade, including rest rooms as I just
mentioned. In some cases they actually have cameras in people’s private homes,
either at their own request or by court order.”
“DHS?” asked Bob.
“Department of Homeland Security,” said Betsy.
“Yeah, that’s a bureaucracy Bush Two created after 9/11,” said Cardinale.
“They were always kind of a third leg among the old Amurrican secret police
agencies. Nobody quite knew what they were for, until they finally found their
niche, which is spying on every single American as far as they can, and for as
much of the time as they can. It started back in 2010 when one of their subsidiary
agencies came up with the first naked body scanners at the airports, and once the
American people swallowed that with only a bit of grumbling, the Surveillance
State was born. DHS has over a million employees involved in watching and
accumulating files and video footage on their fellow citizens. And you can’t
always see the cameras, either. A lot of the time they have micro-fiber optic gear in
place. And they can also hear every word that you even whisper on a crowded
street with their directional audio recording; 1984 has now come true in Hunter
Wallace’s Amurrica.”
“I still have difficulty believing that the Americans allowed the liberal
régime to outlaw meat and tobacco,” said Bob. “I mean, why? Okay, smoking is
bad for your health if you do it too much, but still, tobacco has been part of the
Western world for five hundred years now. And meat?”
“Meat is murder,” recited Betsy by rote. “Meat is cruelty to animals. We
have to stop raising grain to feed beef cattle because it destroys the rain forest.
Cow farts cause global warming. McDonald’s and Burger King were satanic
capitalist conspiracies to make American kids fat. Red meat makes white males
aggressive. Well, according to them.”
“Maybe that’s how the NVA won,” remarked Bob, bemused.
“Mmmm, I know the School of Intelligence gave you only a crash course on
Whidbey, so I doubt they had much time to clue you in on the whole present
political and social sitch here in the States,” said Cardinale. “How much do you
know about what happened in this country after Longview?”
“Just what I learned in school and what I see in the papers back home, or
from watching The World as It Is on TV.”
“Yeah, great series, that,” said Duke. “I saw it last time I was Home. It will
get you ten years for hatecrime here if you’re caught with a copy.”
“Some of the other mobs have a good sideline in bootleg discs of Northwest
programs, and The World as It Is is one of the most popular,” said Cardinale. “We
can’t do that, because it’s a lot more dangerous than butts or beef. In the eyes of
the American law it’s not just hatecrime, it’s Unauthorized Contact, which is a
National Security Felony and carries up to life in prison, so we don’t dare take the
risk. It would draw too much heat. I know the Ministry of Culture inserts untold
terabytes of propaganda into the American internet and media networks every year,
but most of it’s done safely from the Homeland. Anyway, to make a long story as
short as possible, after she survived impeachment by handing over the Southwest
to the beaners and committing America’s full remaining military strength to the
defense of Israel, Chelsea served out her term as a complete lame duck and the
world went to hell in a handbasket all around her. That’s probably all to the good,
in the sense that it kept the Americans distracted during the formative years of the
Republic’s existence.”
“I remember those years in Montana,” said Bob soberly. “We were
struggling. No way we could have met a full-scale assault back then.”
“How about now?” asked Duke bluntly.
“You’ve been fully briefed?” asked Bob.
“Actually, we’re the ones who have been briefing Olympia on the situation,”
said Cardinale dryly. “Us and the CMI guys here in La Cesspool Grande, whoever
and wherever they are, God bless ‘em.” Bob understood the concept of
compartmentalization and he got that Cardinale did not know and could not contact
the CMI station in Washington. No one can betray what they don’t know.
“Oh, yes sir, of course.” Bob looked at Duke. “Now? I think we’ll win, but
we need to stop it here. We need to stop it here bad.”
Cardinale sighed. “Which we’ll get into in a bit, but let me go on with my
little historical lecture, because if you’re going to be a good spy you need to have a
full understanding of the politics of the situation. Israel went down a couple of
years later, not with a bang but with a whimper. Instead of using their nuclear
arsenal at Dimona to blow away half the Muslim world in a real Holocaust, Israel
sold their nukes off to various countries, especially Canada and the U.S.A., for the
purpose of buying refugee status and legal visas for their Jewish population. In
other words, when it came down to the rubber meeting the road, for all their brag
and bluster about the Masada Option, the Jews turned and ran instead.”
“Big surprise,” grunted Betsy.
“Then along comes Hunter Wallace and his One Nation Indivisible,”
Cardinale went on. “We’re still not sure how much of the ONI concept was
Wallace’s and how much of it came from the think tanks and the various Jewish
handlers who already had their hooks into the young Congressman from Alabama
from back in his blogging days, but it was well thought out and well planned.
America needed help, bad. It was obvious that the old two-party system was on its
last legs, that it had failed miserably as successive administrations had made bad
call after bad call for decades. They’d just lost a quarter of the country to us and
the Aztlan beaners, Israel was gone and the economy was crashing, and the
perceived wisdom was that if Amurrica followed the usual pattern of declining
empires, it was time for a man on a white horse.”
“Yes, we got that in senior class political science in high school,” said Bob.
“Usually that means some general marching into the corrupt halls of power, the
legislature or the executive palace, and taking over by force. Sometimes he sticks
some heads on pikes, sometimes he sticks a lot of heads on pikes, and sometimes
not. This phase is usually followed by a few wars of conquest which fizzle out and
leave the country in worse shape than before. Napoleon springs to mind. Then
more instability, and depending on how the economy goes, either total collapse or
some very anemic state much reduced in size and scope and power. But that didn’t
happen in the U.S.A. At least not exactly like that.”
“Yes, the situation was a bit unique,” agreed Cardinale. “In Amurrica’s case
they’d already tried and failed at the wars of conquest, so it looked like total
collapse and the geopolitical breakup of the North American continent into about
ten small nations was on the cards.”
“Then along comes the Doughboy,” said Duke.
“What?” asked Bob.
“One of the nicknames for our illustrious Commander in Chief and Leader
of the Free World,” said Cardinale. “Don’t use it in public, though. Five years for
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy, meaning us. It comes from some old
television advertisement, but nobody can remember what it meant originally.”
“He looks like he’s made of dough,” said Betsy.
Cardinale continued. “Anyway, what either Wallace or the Jews running
him, or both, managed to pull off was a kind of controlled man on a white horse
scenario that preserved the outward form of the United States. Then through a
deliberate retrenchment, they managed to stabilize the remaining U.S.A. into a pale
shadow of its former self, but a functioning one nonetheless. That retrenchment is
what makes the whole ONI thing so amazing. What Wallace did was he managed
to remove ideology from American politics altogether, by creating a moral and
ideological tent so big that it has something for everybody. Ever hear the old
expression about creating a desert and calling it peace? Hunter Wallace created a
cesspool and called it a national consensus. All the special interest groups that
comprised the Gorgeous Mosaic were, and are, willing to put up with some really
outrageous crap being forced on them, in order to get their own outrageous crap
forced on other people. It’s like Wallace took the very worst from both right and
left and made it the law of the land.”
“He was able to get the politicians and pressure groups to go for some weird
trade-offs, all right,” said Duke with a nod. “Like legalizing prostitution and
marijuana, and banning tobacco and meat except for Jews, who of course due to
their unique heritage and thousands of years of suffering blah blah blah are exempt
from the rules the rest of us have to follow. Well, they always were, but ONI is the
first time that’s ever been formally acknowledged. In exchange for giving the
loony lefty-libs all of the above, Wallace gave the neocons and the 700 Club tubthumpers their doggie bones as well. He banned abortion, tacitly acknowledging
that if the United States wants to survive, they’d better stop slaughtering millions
of future taxpayers at birth. He banned the teaching of evolution, and so now
American kids who want to get real science degrees have to go to Canada or
Europe to take certain courses, which are then quietly accredited to the student
back at his American university. That way the hoot-and-holler crowd is placated
without stripping America of doctors and biologists. Wallace also allowed prayer
back in the schools, and a nationwide ban on alcohol and marijuana sales on
Sundays, not to mention giving shelter and automatic citizenship to three million
Jews when Israel became Palestine again, so both the kikes and the tub-thumpers
love him to death and can’t do enough for him on election day.”
“The current president had a unique perspective on America that no else
ever had, or if they did they never acted on it,” said Cardinale. “Hunter Wallace
realized that a lot of the so-called social issues under the old order had to do not so
much with people wanting to do things that were forbidden, but with forcing other
people whom they didn’t like to do things they didn’t believe in or want to do. If
you can give Americans that triumphalist feeling that they’re controlling the way
other people live, they will adore you for it.”
“America isn’t about freedom, it’s about fun,” said Betsy. “The fun of
always winning and rubbing other people’s noses in the dirt.”
“The Germans call it Schadenfreude,” said Cardinale. “I think that’s the
reason why the old conservative American élite can never forgive the Northwest
Republic—because we won, and Amurrica never had to deal with just plain defeat
where you count your dead, get over it, and move on. Europe could have taught
them a lot about that, if they’d ever had a mind to listen. But there was a good deal
of method in the madness. Wallace pulled the remaining American military forces
out of most of the rest of the world, and he abolished the draft, and that alone saved
enough money to keep the economy from tanking. He has re-professionalized the
American military to a great degree, not to mention whitening it up through strictly
enforced educational and legal requirements for enlistment, so forth and so on. The
days of drafting street gangs en masse into the army and FATPO are more or less
over, until now, anyway, when they seem to have revived that kind of recruitment
policy for this Operation Chain Link thing they’re running down at Fort Bragg. I
think we know what kind of muscle they want occupying the Northwest. But the
American military itself is actually in the best shape it’s been in for decades.
Wallace never made any bones about the fact that the new improved American
military is to be used to re-conquer the Northwest Republic and re-unite the
country from Sea to Shining Sea, as he puts it.”
“How about re-conquering Aztlan?” asked Bob.
“Ah, but he has a legal fig leaf for not doing that,” Cardinale reminded him.
“Technically speaking, Aztlan is still part of the United States, remember. They are
a territory like Puerto Rico used to be before it became a state. They still send two
Senators each to Washington from California, Nevada, Arizona, Nuevo Mejico and
Tejas Españoles. It doesn’t have to be re-conquered, and also that means that no
one can complain about all the beaners here in the rest of the country, because
technically speaking they’re all Americans now.”
“Okay, I suppose we’d better move on to why I’m here now,” said Bob with
a sigh. “Operation Belladonna. Who chose that name, by the way? Belladonna is a
poisonous plant.”
“I chose it,” said Cardinale. “In Italian it also means beautiful lady. You’ll
see why when you meet her. But you’re supposed to remember her from before she
became a Lost Baby, right?”
“I last saw her when she was ten years old,” explained Bob. “I was fourteen
when the war ended. She had a crush on me, which I treated with the usual
adolescent silliness and rudeness, and I’ll always regret that, because we never got
old enough together to sort it out. Yeah, Peanut was a cute kid, a sweet kid, and she
actually helped hide my NVA sister after that slaughterhouse in Helena. She
thought it was all a big game, of course, but she kept her lip zipped about it until
after Longview. She’s got brains and guts and circumspection, or at least she did at
age ten. But at Whidbey I was also given the file you guys accumulated on her
once she popped up on your radar, and I understand that she’s pretty messed up
now. I guess forcible separation from her family and twelve years growing up as a
pampered rich kid in a lefty-lib household full of money and drugs and bullshit
will do that to a girl. She has a baby of her own now, you say?”
“A toddler,” said Cardinale. “A daughter, Allura, aged eighteen months. The
father is some trust fund weenie from New York she met at Brown University, who
now seems to be out of the picture. We checked him out, and he’s a dweeb
interested in nothing but spending daddy’s money on fast cars and heavy dope.
He’s never even seen the child, and she is legally Allura Halberstam. Interestingly,
her official legal guardians are Marvin and Amber Halberstam.”
“What kind of man doesn’t want his name to go on in his children?”
wondered Bob, shaking his head.
“Very few American white males of that age are men,” said Betsy.
“One of the hooks the Office recommended I use to get her on board is to
promise to get both Georgia and the child Home if she co-operates,” said Bob. “If
she doesn’t even care enough to maintain legal custody of her own daughter, I’m
not sure that will work.”
“That’s why you’re here. You need to make contact with her in the guise of
an old friend to go over old times and deliver those messages from her father and
her brother you brought with you. You’ll have to evaluate her as a person and as a
potential intelligence asset, and if we think there is even a chance she might go for
it, you have to lay our proposal on her.”
“‘Hey, Peanut, will you do us favor? Fuck a perverted president for your
country, a country you haven’t seen since you were a child and probably don’t
remember much?’” sighed Bob. “No need to look concerned, sir. I know this has to
be done and I’m the guy best suited to do it. I wasn’t allowed to bring anything
personal Out Here, but if I could, I’d show you a picture of my wife and my two
children back in Missoula. Georgia’s my past, and they’re my future. Don’t worry,
I’m up for this.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Cardinale dryly.
Betsy spoke up sympathetically. “Since we’re talking nasty details, I
suppose you need to know there will be very little actual … well, Hunter Wallace’s
proclivities aren’t normal. They can’t be. He’s not medically capable of it, not for
any sustained period.”
“Yeah, I know, hypo-gonadism. They told me all that at Whidbey. He has
to…” Bob waved his hand in the air vaguely.
“Substitute,” Betsy completed for him. “I know. I run with a lot of other
licensed girls from the high end agencies. I have to. They’re a mine of information
the Office has to tap, and I’ve heard things. If she goes for it, you need to do your
best to make her understand what she’ll be getting into so she’ll be prepared and
she won’t freak.”
Bob stared. “How the hell am I supposed to tell her … I mean Jesus, sir, men
and women who aren’t involved with one another don’t even talk about things like
that back home, not even the normal stuff! Not like here, where the weirdest and
filthiest crap I’ve ever seen is on every front page and every screen!”
“You probably shouldn’t try to talk to her about it,” said Cardinale. “Let
Bets do that. We run our assets in pairs, which is a little dangerous if it goes bad,
but much more effective in the long run. It helps for an asset to know there’s more
than one of us and if one handler has to disappear quick, a new one doesn’t have to
start cold and re-build the trust relationship from scratch. Plus a female asset can
often relate better to a female handler. You’ll need a backup handler for this girl if
anything happens to you, and there may be times when she needs some tagteaming to keep her steady and keep her on point. You may have to play good cop-
bad cop, or good spy-bad spy. Betsy will be your backup, and later on, you’ll have
the Zombie Master as well. I’ll tell you about him in a bit. Belladonna won’t ever
see me or Duke. We’ll get you inside with her first to scope her out, get a read on
her state of mind, and then when it looks safe we’ll bring in Betsy. She’ll handle
all the down-low girl-talk stuff with Georgia.”
“That’s if we get that far at all,” said Bob. “You know there’s a chance
Georgia may have gone totally bad? Maybe she’s in love with a nigger. She may
be perfectly happy with her life, such as it seems to be. She may not want to see
me at all. She may not want to Come Home, ever. She may not want to be
reminded of what she left behind. Or she may just plain freak out as soon as she
realizes who I am and why I’m here. She may pick up the phone and call the FBI.”
“That’s a possibility,” agreed Cardinale. “We’ll have contingency plans to
E&E you if it looks like you’re in danger, but I grant you, the risk is not small. But
we don’t think she’s totally lost. For one thing, she kept the baby, even though she
didn’t have to. ONI may have outlawed abortion, but people on the Halberstams’
socio-economic level in this society can get around that easily. Hell, anybody can,
for the price of an air ticket to Toronto or London. Plus she could have picked up a
pretty penny by selling the kid on the adoption market. It Takes a Village is still
around, and white infants go for top dollar. She didn’t do that.”
“For another thing, we did a sneak-and-peak in her apartment in Georgetown
when she was spending the weekend with her family in the Hamptons,” said Duke.
“Had to arrange a localized outage on the security cams to do it, but we had about
half an hour inside. She’s not dumb enough to look at NAR stuff on her
computer—almost nobody is, since the FBI and DHS don’t bother to conceal the
fact that they do random searches on millions of people every year, and anybody
caught with anything originating in the Republic gets five years and mandatory
Attitude Modification.”
“Chemicals combined with electroshock to purge your mind of wicked racist
thoughts,” put in Betsy.
“But she does have a secret stash of old coffee-table books hidden in one of
her closets,” Duke went on. “She must have done the rounds of every old
bookshop in the District and New York to find some of these books. All of them
full of big full-page color photographs of the Northwest, Washington and Oregon
and Idaho, but especially Montana. The pages with pictures of Missoula on them
are all loose and well worn, and most of them have some odd stains on them.”
“Tears,” said Betsy.
“You’re sure?” asked Bob. The thought of Georgia taking out her forbidden
books and weeping over pictures of Montana in the night filled him with sadness.
“I’m sure,” said Betsy.
“She remembers, Richie,” said Cardinale. “She remembers enough, anyway.
You’re going to have to make her remember more, make her willing to do anything
to break away from the luxurious toilet she’s spent the past twelve years in and go
back to where she and her daughter belong.”
“And we will do that?” demanded Bob.
“You’re damned straight we will,” said Cardinale, and Bob knew he spoke
the truth. “Always with the proviso that death and history don’t intervene, and
there’s never any guarantee against that. I can’t say when or how, and I’m not
going to lie to you, this is a damned dangerous thing we’re doing. You and she
both might get hurt, bad. But if she does this for us, the very minute we believe she
is in any danger, then we’ll find a way to extract her and you can take her and the
child back to the Homeland.”
“Presuming the Homeland isn’t in the middle of a war,” said Duke glumly.
“If that’s the case then I’ll find someplace safe for Georgia and the baby, and
then I’m going back,” said Bob. “Everyone I have is in Missoula, and if I can’t
help them from here then I’m going home and reporting to my reserve unit, or
whoever’s still fighting.”
“Understood,” said Cardinale. “We know you’re not full time Office, you’re
just here on this one project, and if that’s the way it plays out, we’ll help. Duke,
suppose you run him over to the District now? Best use the Key Bridge this time of
day, and let’s make damned sure that FLEC card of his works. Once you’re there,
show him around and start getting him oriented. Park someplace and take him for a
ride on the buses and trains. Most of what you’ll be doing over there you can do on
foot, and if you end up having to do the Resurrection Shuffle in the Green Zone,
boxed in like you are you don’t need to be hampered by a car.” Bob thrilled at
hearing the old NVA term for going on the run. “We disable the GPS in all of ours,
but still, in an enclosed space like that a lone man can move and hide better on foot
than a vehicle on the street, if they’re looking for you.”
Suddenly the phone on Cardinale’s desk rang. He picked it up and opened it.
“Yeah?” He listened for a bit. “Okay, got it” he said, closing the phone. “Crap!”
“What is it, boss?” asked Duke.
“Our girl just called in,” said Cardinale. “Her usual order, three cartons of
Belmont filters. She likes Canadian cigarettes for some reason. I wanted to give
you a couple of days to get your bearings before initiating contact, Rich, but
sounds like destiny is playing your song. You up for it now?”
“Let’s go,” said Bob.
An hour later Richie the buttlegger from Mayor Daley’s old neighborhood
rang the doorbell of a refined semi-detached brownstone in the suburb of
Georgetown, ironically located in the northwest quadrant of the District of
Columbia. The intercom buzzed. “Who is it?” came a young woman’s voice.
Bob leaned down to the speaker. “My name’s Richie. I just came over from
Arlington, and I got the botanical material you wanted.” He was acutely conscious
of the small white camera on a pole across the street, panning slowly back and
forth, a small red light flashing. The damned things were everywhere, all right, and
he was doing an illegal drug deal right in front of one.
“What’s the password?” the woman inside giggled.
Bob rolled his eyes, but he had been briefed. “Joe sent me.”
Several locks on the door rattled, and Georgia opened it. Bob remembered a
pretty little child; what he now saw before him was a sorceress, a temptress of
light, a vision in jeans and a pale blue cotton work shirt. Her skin was white as
porcelain, her long yellow hair so light as almost to be white, her eyes the clear
blue of the evening sky yet ringed like Millie’s, with a darker blue that made them
piercing. She had the face of a Botticelli angel, a body slim and soft and from what
he could tell beneath the cloth and denim, perfect in form. He understood why the
boss had named this operation Belladonna. He could have been looking at Dante’s
Beatrice, if Beatrice had been in the custom of receiving callers with a smoldering
marijuana joint dangling from her lips.
“You’re new,” she drawled, with another giggle. Her eyes were glittering
and her pupils dilated.
“Yeah, just blew in from the Windy City. Here’s your stuff,” Bob said,
handing her a paper sack from the gym bag he carried.
“Three grand, right?” she said, handing him a wad of bills. He stuffed the
money in his back pocket, so the camera could see it.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Bob asked her.
“Mmmm, now that you mention it…” She looked at his face, trying to focus.
“You brought the steaks and real Texas chili for Congressman Ortega’s barbecue
last weekend?”
“No,” he said. “You did a favor for my sister once, long ago. You and Kevin
hid her from some unsavory characters in your father’s garage. Hi, Peanut.”
She stared at him, startled, and then all of a sudden she screamed “Bobby!”
and threw her arms around him, crushing him and burning his neck with the joint,
which she had forgotten to take out of her mouth.
God, she’s beautiful! was Robert’s first thought, and God, she’s stoned! was
his second.
X. The Lost Baby
(12 years and six months after Longview)
Ha, banishment! be merciful, say “death;”
For exile hath more terror in his look,
Much more than death.
-Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 3
Fortunately for Robert Campbell, Georgia was alone in the townhouse when
he showed up at her door, or in her excited state she would probably have dragged
him in and introduced him to all her friends, including the black and Jewish ones,
and gotten herself arrested for Unauthorized Contact with someone from the
dreaded Northwest Republic. Bob was never able to reconstruct accurately the first
half hour he spent with her inside the brownstone, except that any worries he had
about getting her to open up were laid to rest. He found himself inside the thickcarpeted living room and seated on a plush sofa, while Georgia Myers, or
Halberstam, sat beside him, clinging to him like a limpet and babbling in a soft
surreal drone, a stream of consciousness speech or recitation that seemed to have
been bottled up inside her waiting for this moment of release, when she finally had
a safe audience. It was as if she had been waiting for him to come to her for the
past twelve years, so she could finally tell someone. In that first 30 minutes, he got
her whole pathetic life story.
Some men would have found it amusing and many more annoying, no
matter how beautiful a girl was who grabbed onto them and wouldn’t let go, and
who wouldn’t stop chattering. Bob found it horrifying and searing, because he
understood that it was a story she had been desperate to tell for over half her
lifetime. From the moment her mother had bundled her into the SUV in Missoula
that day, telling her they were going to the mall to try and find some ice cream,
Georgia Myers had no one, no one at all, that she could talk to truthfully and
openly. Every moment of her life since then had been a lie forced on her by every
other human being around her, the essence of the American experience. It had
possibly driven her mad.
It was all there. The child’s first realization that the SUV driven by her
mother was headed out of town and not for the mall. Her turning around and
noticing the packed bags and suitcases in the back. Her tears and pleas to her
mother to turn around and go back home, and the dawning realization that she
would never see her father or her brother again as her mother babbled on and on,
every left-wing liberal cliché from the past century droning from Amber’s lips like
a constant low-key air raid siren.
There was the terror of approaching the new border, where Amber had
described to her in detail the horrors that would be perpetrated against them both if
the evil Nazi border guards caught them—this had been where Georgia had learned
what rape was. In point of fact there were no Nazi border guards, evil or otherwise.
The only thing they saw while leaving the Northwest Republic were a few Civil
Guards directing traffic or helping broken-down motorists. Their vehicle wasn’t
searched by threatening armed men until they entered the American sector at a
military police checkpoint at an on-ramp on the eastern side of Interstate Fifteen,
and then they were back in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Later
on, at a hundred cocktail parties and formal dinners, Amber would amplify their
escape into a daring midnight break for freedom, dodging Nazi tanks and SS goons
with Dobermans. The liberal audience avidly hung onto her every word, and by
then Georgia was always too apathetic or too bombed to contradict her. After a
while, Georgia’s memory got so fuzzy that she sometimes couldn’t recall what
really happened, so maybe there had been SS men and Dobermans after all.
Above all, Georgia remembered two things from that long, claustrophobic
road trip: the constant search for a “decent” motel at night—Red Lion and Day’s
Inn were for middle-class plebes; the daughter of Washington liberal aristocracy
had to bed down in a Sheraton or at least a Holiday Inn—and the endless, blatting
monologue all the way to D.C., wherein her mother constantly justified,
rationalized, recapped and ranted on and on about what she was doing, and how it
was absolutely the right thing, no question at all, almost as if she were trying to
convince herself.
“I have dreams all the time,” Georgia told Bob as she poured it all out,
clinging to him. “I dream about Dad and Kevin. I dream about you and Jenny. I
dream about Missoula, the blue mountains on the skyline all around us. I dream
about waking up in the morning in our old house on Daly Avenue and finding the
windows covered with snow and Dad having to shovel a tunnel from the front door
to the street. I dream about you and me and Kevin and Jenny running around
playing all over the halls in the university, running out on all the lawns, and up on
Mount Sentinel. Some of the dreams are bad, real bad, but the worst nightmare of
all is that I am stuck in that car forever, driving east with my mother going on and
on and on about how she’s really doing the right thing for my sake and how Dad
and Kevin are sick with racism because they’re men and for the sake of our true
womanhood—yeah, she used that phrase—we have to get away from them and
never let them poison our lives. Bobby, when I die, if God decides I have to go to
hell for being the worthless little twist I am, then He will put me back in that car
with my mother forever, just rolling down the highway in the dark as she goes on
and on with all that crap, denying and destroying everything I’ve ever known and
loved, and she just will not shut up.”
Then came the years after they settled in under Georgia’s grandmother’s
roof over on K Street. There was the money, the Euro-nannies and Third World
servants, the expensive and exclusive private schools, and the constant procession
of liberal drinky-dos and events and discussion groups that Lily Escott, the original
rich liberal Democrat battle-axe from hell, ran out of her home. Lily prided herself
on maintaining a D.C. anachronism in the internet age, an old-fashioned liberal
salon, which she admitted she tried to pattern after the salon of Madame Roland
during the French Revolution. The historical fact that Madame Roland was
eventually guillotined by her ultra-left former comrades always seemed to escape
Lily’s notice.
There were the early years of psychotherapy with expensive Jewish
psychiatrists to get Georgia over the trauma of having survived the Nazi
occupation of Montana. “That’s what I am, Bobby,” she told him in a monotone,
sitting on the sofa and still gripping him. “I’m an official survivor of the
Cataclysm, as it’s called. Kind of like Holocaust survivors were fifty years ago. As
Cataclysm Survivors Mom and I both get a government check every month, not
that we need it. I use mine to buy dope and booze and ciggies. You’d be amazed
how many people from the Northwest survived the Cataclysm, once President
Wallace started passing those checks out.”
“Rather like the miraculous multiplication of Jewish Holocaust survivors
from the 1970s and 1980s onward, I imagine,” Bobby replied with a chuckle.
“Back home we call you a Lost Baby. There were all too many of those in real life,
kids like you, white children of the Runaways who were taken away from their
Homeland and forced to grow up in what was left of Amurrica, brainwashed into
liberalism and into hating their own race.”
“Why didn’t the Republic stop her?” asked Georgia dully. “Why did nobody
on the NAR side even stop the damned car and ask where the hell we were going?”
Bob sighed. “Georgia, that debate has been raging within the Republic ever
since it happened, and it’s caused more criticism by the Opposition in Parliament
and from the people themselves than anything we’ve ever done. The government
of the time made that decision. Most of the ministers from back then have since
said publicly that it was the worst call they ever made, and the Lost Babies have
become part of our national memory and legend. Untold tens and hundreds of
thousands of white children, lost forever to the soul-poison that is America. Every
month the NAR media runs big stories about Lost Babies who Come Home again,
sometimes after having to run the McCurtain where they really do have to face
machine guns and Dobermans and minefields, just not on our side of the border.
”But we have to be fair and realistic. You were only ten in those days,
Peanut. I was fourteen, and so I remember a little more. Things were really shaky
back then, and I don’t mean just ice cream shortages in the stores. After Longview
we went through four bad months, a time they call the Consolidation, or some call
it the Cleanup.”
“I remember some,” said Georgia. “Mom was really scared. If she has any
legitimate excuse for what she did to me, I suppose that would be it. She was really
afraid.”
“The government of the Republic was new, its hold on power was shaky, our
army was only half-trained and we barely had a navy or an air force at all,” said
Bob. “We didn’t know whether or not the Congress and Chelsea Clinton here in
D.C. were going to simply tear up the Longview Treaty and invade the Republic
full force to try and re-conquer us. That’s one reason why the stuff that went on
during the Cleanup had to be kept so quiet. One thing the Republic couldn’t afford
was to have a lot of atrocity stories seeping out, including stories about how we
were kidnapping huge numbers of children from their parents and putting them in
makeshift orphanages or something of the kind so they could supposedly be
brainwashed, like Amber was afraid we’d do to you. And we couldn’t afford a lot
of sullen and resentful people living in the Northwest who were just waiting for the
Americans to come back, who were ready and willing to stab us in the back. We
got rid of the worst ones we could catch during the Cleanup, but we simply
couldn’t identify and kill all the people who were potential threats, and so it was
decided to let them get the hell out if they wanted to. They were encouraged to do
so. We knew it would cause us trouble later, but we opted for the short-term fix
that we could actually implement. Georgia, Clancy and Kevin told me about that
time the Guardsman came to deliver your house documents and Amber ran off at
the mouth to him at the door. If you’d stayed, chances are that eventually there
would have been another knock on the door and BOSS really would have come for
your mother. As horrible as she’s been to you, would you have wanted you and
Clancy and Kevin to have to go through that?”
“I guess not,” said Georgia dully. “I still love her. I have to. She’s my mom.
She was doing what she thought was right, but it was just so, so wrong.” Finally,
tears began to trickle down Georgia’s cheeks.
“Go on, honey, tell me the rest of it,” he urged her.
“Not much to tell, what there is is pretty bad, and I’m probably boring you to
death,” she snuffled.
“No, Peanut, I want to hear it all.”
Georgia’s teenaged years had been luxurious, but a blasted heath
emotionally. More expensive prep schools, then a bought-and-paid-for admission
to Columbia because she couldn’t cut it academically for Lily and Amber’s alma
mater at Brown University, or at any of the remaining five Sisters—Barnard,
Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Smith, or Wellesley. There were carefully selected
expensive friends whose brains were stuffed with cotton, and the endless therapy
her mother and grandmother made sure she got, not to heal her wounded mind or
savaged soul, but increasingly to blame her academic failure and social lapses on
PCSD, Post Cataclysm Stress Disorder. Lily Escott was glad to have them around
as part of her entourage; Northwest “survivors” were a chic accessory to wealthy
liberals post-Longview. There was the endless round of cocktail parties and
fundraisers and weekend retreats to the Hamptons and the country clubs where
Amber and Georgia were trotted out and introduced as prize specimens in Lily’s
personal collection of trendy-left memorabilia. “This is my daughter and my
granddaughter. Cataclysm Survivors, you know,” she would say. “They had to flee
from the Northwest with Stormtroopers chasing them on motorcycles and shooting
at them with machine guns.”
The drugs and the booze started at age 14, the same year Amber married
high-powered Jewish lobbyist and attorney Marvin Halberstam. First came the
purloining of liquor from Lily’s sideboard and the Hamptons wine cellar for
Georgia and her friends, then illegal grass, then legal grass when the ban was
revoked, then the pills. Georgia never had to buy pills from a street dealer, because
between them both, Lily and Amber had every prescription painkiller, tranquilizer,
narcotic and male or female sexual stimulant known to pharmaceutical science.
The boys started at 15, the traffic tickets and wrecked automobiles at 16, and
the first runaway escapade combining all three plus an illegal tobacco possession
charge occurred at age 17. Six months later Georgia was rounded up in a police
raid on an unlicensed “youth club” in Anacostia, and her date for the evening was
found to have over twenty Habanos and Montecristos on him and twelve cartons of
Marlboros in the car, which he had been planning to sell at the rave. The car was
Georgia’s, and she was looking at an accessory charge on a distribution rap, but
Marvin Halberstam got her out of the police station and home by midnight, and her
name never appeared in any arrest report or media story. The boyfriend got three
years in a penal factory and was beaten to death by the Zulu prison gang when he
bungled a promised cigarette deal.
Georgia’s daughter Allura had been the result of a cliché night of drunken
freshman carelessness at Columbia. Georgia didn’t even refer to the father. “Mom
keeps the baby because she says I’m not a fit mother,” she said casually, as if it
were the most natural thing in the world. “She’s probably right. I’m stoned most of
the time and I keep waking up beside guys whose names I can’t remember. Maybe
I’ll get my act together someday and I can have her with me. But what the hell, I’m
young now, might as well enjoy myself, right?”
Bob thought of his own kids, and he barely refrained from tearing into her
with an angry lecture on parental responsibility, because that wasn’t what he was
there for. The Northwest Republic needed this young woman, needed her to do
grotesque and sickening things in order to stop a war and save God alone knew
how many white lives, and moralizing judgments were not on the menu. “But you
kept Allura,” he told her gently. “You didn’t have to. People as rich as your family
don’t have to obey the law. You could have gotten rid of the child.”
“Yeah, Mom wanted me to go to Canada and take a scrape,” said Georgia
carelessly. Bobby winced at the cold and heartless term, although he knew it was
standard lingo in Hunter Wallace’s Amurrica. “She was insistent about it, but I
muled up on her and I wouldn’t do it.”
“You kept the child to defy your mother?” asked Bob, gently probing.
“Nah,” said Georgia “It just seems like such a rotten thing to do, killing a
baby. Especially your own. Like, bad karma, ya know? I mean, it’s not like it’s her
fault her mother is some skeezy slut who was too drunk to make the guy wear a
condom, is it?” It was a spark of goodness in all the rotten darkness of Georgia’s
life, and for the first time, Bob was encouraged. She might go for it, he thought.
About the time of Allura’s birth, Lily Escott had died of advanced cirrhosis
of the liver; a lifetime of champers and Chardonnay at the liberal drinky-dos
followed by long nights of Chivas and Stoly chasers neat finally caught up to her.
Marvin Halberstam gallantly took over the role of guardian angel to his wife’s
screwed-up kid. Halberstam sat Georgia down in his study in the house on K
Street, which Amber had inherited, and told her, “Look, chickadee, so far you’re
just an embarrassment, not a disaster. I can live with that. This is D.C. and it’s not
like this kind of tsimmes is uncommon from your generation, plus you got the
whole escape from Stalag-13 thing going for you, so you always gotta excuse. Me
being Joosh, I of all people can tell you, such an excuse can cover a multitude of
sins. Our people used the Holocaust as our excuse for a hundred years, and now
we’ve got the loss of Israel to last us another century.
“Look, let’s face facts,” Halberstam had continued, waving his thoroughly
illegal Cohiba cigar in the air. “You flunked out of Columbia, and any more
college would be a waste of time and money. It’s not like you’re ever going to
have to earn your own living or you’re ever going to need an education for
anything. On the other hand, at this point I don’t see any need to ship you off to
Paris or Honolulu or any of the other places of exile where our kind of people
dump their family skeletons. You’re not that far gone yet.”
“Gee, thanks!” said Georgia. “Praise from Caesar.”
“So such a deal I’ll make you: I am getting for you a job at Loughlin and
Wintersham, the publicists. You start off at three hundred grand a year, which I
know is peanuts in this town, but there are perks. You get Class A federal
government medical insurance, because the firm handles a few government
accounts, and that includes rehab whenever you need to dry out a bit. You’ll have a
full expense account and you can write off most of your meals, just say you were
with a client, or you can fill up on hors d’oeuvres every day from all the receptions
and cocktail parties you’ll be going to. If you don’t want, you’ll never have to buy
any groceries. The work is easy; you could do it in your sleep. You’ll be writing up
press releases and throwing parties for Congresspeople and corporations and bigshot writer and professor types with books they want to plug, general schmoozing,
you get the idea. You like parties, right? Now you can plan your own, with
somebody else’s money. Plus we’ll get you a nice place of your own, in
Georgetown maybe, and your mom and I will take care of your rent and utilities.
We keep Allura out of your hair; we pay for the nanny and the pre-school and
everything. In return, all we ask is that you try, try, try not to fuck up and to keep
your name off TV and out of the internet gossip pages, at least until you can find a
nice sugar daddy to marry. Maybe a Senator. With your looks and that body, a
Senator you should be shtupping. If only I hadn’t met your mother first…”
Halberstam shook his nose regretfully and looked down it at Georgia with a lust he
had never tried to disguise from her, although he was careful to hide the fact from
Amber and Amber’s attorneys who controlled the Escott multi-millions.
“Okay, you got a deal,” Georgia had told him. “You guys can get on with
your big political wheeling and dealing and your backroom intrigues, and I’ll just
go off in a corner and hide like a little mouse. Two conditions. First, I want you to
get one of your rabbi buddies to get me a kosher card saying I’m a Jew, so I can
have a hamburger or some chicken on my Caesar salad without getting arrested.”
“Done,” Halberstam replied.
“Second condition is for you, Marvin. If I ever feel your hand down my bra
again, I not only tell Mom, I file a lawsuit the side of the Capitol dome against you,
and I e-mail copies of it to every news site and gossip page in the world, plus a
number of private e-mail addresses I’ve managed to accumulate in my years of
hanging around over on K Street. I may pass myself around like popcorn to
everybody else, but not you, Marvin. You don’t get any. Not ever. Got it?”
“Oy, chickadee, you drive a hard bargain…” moaned Marvin.
At this point in Georgia’s Molly Bloom-like stream-of-consciousness
ramble, Bob made a second clinical mental note to himself. No Jews, no niggers,
no other women figuring so far in her little Rabelaisian epic, he noted clinically.
She still seems to have some standards, in spite of it all. He was glad he could say
that to himself.
Finally, she ran down and let him go. “Jesus, Bob, you must think I’m really
nuts,” she said sniffing. “Sorry about all that. It’s just that I don’t have any real
friends I can talk to, at least no one who wouldn’t turn me in or try to use it to get
me in bed.”
“Well, you do now,” said Bob.
“I didn’t even offer you anything.” She waved toward the liquor cabinet.
“Brandy, single-malt, imported vodka? You want a joint?” She proffered the
marijuana pack.
“No thanks, just coffee will be fine. Black.” Georgia brought him a cup,
broached one of the packets of Belmont filters he’d brought and lit a cigarette.
“You might want to lay off the hard stuff and the weed yourself for a bit, Peanut. I
need to talk to you about some things.”
She smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I figured. Why did you come here, Bob?
And why are you working as a street buttlegger in Washington, D.C., of all things?
I may be a slut and a stoner, but I’m not stupid. At least not yet. Give me a couple
of more years on the booze and the weed and I may be stupid, but not now.”
“Well, for one thing, I brought you a message from your father and your
brother,” said Robert, avoiding the main subject. He took out two data chips and
nodded to the huge plasma screen that filled one wall in the living room. “Before I
play this for you, I have to run this program to make sure your TV’s memory chip
doesn’t keep any record of this, nothing that the DHS and FBI surveillance can
locate if they do a spot check on your home’s hard drive.” Bob referred to the
central hard drive in the apartment that ran all the electronic appliances, from
Georgia’s phone to her TV to her personal laptop dataplayer. “I find it difficult to
comprehend a society where a father sending his daughter a video letter could get
her thrown in prison for watching it, but that’s the way of things here in the Land
of Liberty these days. No kidding, Georgia, this is Unauthorized Contact, and you
can get in really bad trouble.”
“I don’t think so,” said Georgia with a giggle.
“Why not?”
“You tell me your secret and I’ll tell you mine,” she said with a sly smile.
“Do you want to hear this from your dad and your brother?” he asked
bluntly. “Even though you’ll be breaking U.S. law by doing so?” It was her first
test, but he didn’t tell her that.
“I’ve been waiting to hear it for twelve years, Bobby. Play it.”
He ran the program to bypass the TV’s memory chip, and then he inserted
the chip he had come all this way to bring her. Clancy Myers’ tired and aging face
appeared on the screen, the book-lined shelves of his home library behind him.
“Look familiar?” asked Bob.
“God, he looks old! They still live in the house on Daly Avenue?” asked
Georgia, her voice choking.
“Clancy does,” Bob told her. “Kevin and his wife have their own home now,
but Clancy stayed. He always said he wanted it to be there for you if you ever
came back.”
Clancy spoke on the wide plasma screen. “Hello, Georgia. I hope Bob is
able to get in touch with you and give you this message from Kevin and me.
Honey, there is so much I want to say to you that I don’t know where to begin, but
I know I have to keep this short. Kevin and I are both well, Kevin is married now,
to a fine girl from Helena, and you have a little nephew. His name is Kevin
Junior.” A picture of a smiling infant just barely able to sit up was flashed up on
the screen for about ten seconds, then Clancy’s face returned. “Georgia, from the
very day you disappeared, your brother and I have never ceased to love you and
worry about you and think about you, every day.” (Clancy had been advised by the
WPD to refrain from including any adverse comments or even any reference at all
to Georgia’s mother, since it was unknown for certain what Amber and Georgia’s
relationship was like.) “I don’t know what your life has been like, or exactly where
you are now, but I know that here in Montana our lives have been poorer and
sadder without you. We have missed you every day, in a hundred different ways.
Honey, I’m going to ask you something now, and that is that you try to Come
Home, even if it’s only for a visit, and bring your little girl with you. Yes, honey,
we know about Allura, and I want you to know that we love her and welcome her
into our family, even if we’re never able to meet her. Bob Campbell is going to try
to deliver this message for us, and if he has been able to do so, you’ll see that he’s
grown into a very brave and handsome young man. Well, that’s the kind of young
men who always did come out of Montana. Bob is going to talk to you about
perhaps Coming Home for good. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about
coming back, Georgia. I honestly hope that you’re happy where you are, but from
what I’ve been told, I can’t see that being the case. Not under the—circumstances.
If I’m right about that, and you want to Come Home, Bob will help you. I know
it’s illegal where you are to even plan to visit the Republic without a permit, and it
can get you in a lot of trouble. You’re the one who has to decide whether going or
staying will be worse. But if you do want to come, talk to Bobby about it. I was
told I have to keep this short, so I’ll just say that even if we never see you again,
my beloved child, we will never forget you and we will never cease to mourn your
loss from our lives. We love you, Georgia, always.”
Kevin and his wife Tamara came onto the screen next. Tammy was holding
the baby Kevin Junior in her arms. The infant was grinning into the videocam,
displaying a single new tooth in his mouth, and trying to grab the camera lens,
from which his mother had to hold him back. “Hello, Peanut,” said Kevin, his face
sad. “Not sure if you even remember what I look like at all, but this is me, Kevin.
This is my wife Tamara…”
“Tammy,” she interjected. “Hi, Georgia.”
“Tammy,” Kevin corrected with a smile. “And this is your nephew, Kevin
Junior. Say hello to your aunt Georgia, Kevvie.” The baby shrieked wordlessly and
clawed at the camera with a maniacal grin. His father waved the baby’s tiny arm
and hand at the lens. “We’re told that I have a niece and Kevvie has a cousin,”
Kevin senior went on. “Say hello to your cousin Allura, Kevvie!” He waved the
baby’s hand again and the infant burbled. “I hope that our two children can meet
and play together someday. Maybe even grow up together. Georgia, please, talk to
Bobby, listen to what he has to say, and do what you have to do to come back to
us. When we lost you, Peanut, it was the worst thing that ever happened to Dad and
me. I’m young and I’ve been able to bounce back, especially now that I have
Tammy and this little hellraiser. But Dad’s never been right since you went away,
not really. He once told me the only reason he had for living was to see you once
more before he died. Yeah, I know, that may sound like a grim reason for Coming
Home, but I don’t care why you do it, just come. You and Allura are something
that’s missing here, Georgie, something we all have a right to. This new land that’s
been created for everyone of our kind since the Revolution—it’s something you
and Allura have a right to as well, and no matter what you’ve been told or by
whom, you need to come out here and see it and understand what you’re missing.
This is where you belong, Georgie. Please. Come Home.”
Bob turned off the TV and removed the datachip from the panel. “I have to
take this with me,” he said. “I know you’d like to have it, but it’s too dangerous.”
He looked over and saw that Georgia was sitting on the sofa with her face buried in
her hands, her body shaking with dry, silent sobs. He sat quietly until she lifted her
tear-stained face.
“What exactly do you do back in the Northwest Republic, Bob?” she asked,
surprising him. “Let me guess. You’re a soldier. I meet a lot of military guys here,
some of whom I screw, and so I know the type.”
“Every man in the Republic is a soldier,” he told her. “A lot of the women,
too. We have to be. We’re never going back, Georgia. Never. So yes, I’m a
reservist and I do a few weekends and thirty days of active duty every year. But as
a matter of fact, in my day job, I’m a cop. I’m a detective in the Civil Guard’s
Criminal Investigation Division, the CID. I’m Out Here at the request of another
agency, because I knew you when you were a kid, and they figured I’d be the best
person to ask you a favor.”
“You’re a spy, and you want me to spy on President Wallace for the
Republic,” she said baldly.
Robert Campbell’s blood ran ice cold in his veins. Jesus Christ on a raft! he
thought. What the hell? How did she know, and who else knows? “Yes,” he said in
a level voice, and waited for her to explain.
“I got the call a few weeks ago, and I did my final interview and polygraph
with the Secret Service yesterday,” she told him. “The head of the President’s
Secret Service detail is this big black guy named Jimbo, and he had to okay me.
That’s why I wasn’t worried about a DHS spot check picking up Dad and Kevin’s
vidlet; all the spooks have already gone through all my hard drives and portable
devices with a fine-toothed comb, the more so because I was born in Montana and
they’re worried that some mysterious stranger from my past might approach me
one day to betray my country and my Doughboy. They just missed you by a couple
of days, or maybe you just missed them, but right now, I’m squeaky clean in
official eyes. I report to the White House for my first night shift, I guess you’d call
it, on Monday at four p.m. They’ve got the drill down after years of practice. After
I fill out all my tax forms in Human Resources, I go up and do the President of the
United States. Maybe in the residence itself, since Hunter isn’t married and he
doesn’t have a wife to keep in the dark, but more probably in the little side room
off the Oval Office with the minibar and the big comfy sofa that every President
since John F. Kennedy has kept for the purpose. They call it the executive lounge.
Apparently, Reagan never used it for that purpose, but every other president since
then has. They even let me in on one of the little Secret Service inside jokes:
Hillary had more women in the executive lounge than Bill ever did, and they were
better looking.”
“And you agreed to this?” asked Bob. “Why, Georgia?” Why did you agree
to let that pervert near you? he thought in anguish. Why, Peanut?
She was brutally frank. “The bennies are great, I get to hang out in the West
Wing as well as the residence. I even get my own little cubbyhole office and some
data entry and filing to do, to account for my presence in the building, and working
in the White House still has a hell of a lot of prestige. My mom can start bringing
me to cocktail parties again. I get to ride on Air Force One and be around a lot of
exciting people and things going on. My mom and my stepdad are over the moon.
I’ve finally made them proud of me. Marvin is already slavering over all the new
contacts and inside info I can get him. I signed a six month personal services
contract which Hunter can renew, but only with my consent, which I gather he
never gets from any of his girls. Six months on my back doing what I would do
anyway, for recreation or just out of boredom, and I’m set for life with money of
my own so I can support Allura and not be dependent on my mother and that
goddamned horn dog Marvin any more. Call it a career move.” She shook her head
sadly. “You came here expecting to find a little girl, but she’s lost and gone
forever. All you found was a drunk and a druggie and now a high-class whore. I’m
sorry, Bobby, more sorry than I can say that you know what I am now and you
can’t remember me as that little girl ever again. But do you want my father and my
brother to see me as I am, too? Am I the little girl they want to welcome home
again? I don’t think so. God knows what you’ll tell them. I’ll leave that up to you.
But Peanut can’t go home to Daly Avenue again, ever. She’s dead. She died when
she crossed Interstate Fifteen that day.”
“Did she?” Bob got up and moved to a wall where hung a framed linen
sampler similar to the ones well-bred young ladies hundreds of years before turned
out from their sewing baskets. On it was a poem, Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Requiem:
UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
“From my arts and crafts class at one of my many prep schools, before I got
kicked out for being drunk and naked in the boys’ locker room,” Georgia told him.
“I look at it sometimes, and yeah, I wonder what might have been. But it can’t be,
Bobby. I’ve got to move on, and deep down I know it.”
“Yeah, I guess you’ll get to be around all kinds of exciting people and events
over there at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania,” said Bob conversationally. “Nice cute
little baby nephew you saw in that video, wasn’t he? Maybe you’ll get to be in the
room when your fancy man Hunter Wallace gives the order launching the bombers
and the missiles that will burn him alive with napalm in his crib.”
“What?” asked Georgia, uncomprehending.
Bob turned to face her. “They’re coming for us, Georgia. This time it’s for
real. A full-scale invasion of the Northwest Republic. B-52s and Tomahawk
missiles and maybe nuclear weapons and anthrax.”
“My God!” whispered Georgia.
“We figure sometime in June, but we may be wrong,” Bob went on. “We
don’t know for sure, and we have to know. We have to know when they’re
coming, and how, and how many. There’s only one man who has all that
knowledge in his head. We have to know what he knows, and what he is thinking.
That’s why I’m here, Georgia. I am here to ask you to go into the very belly of the
beast and prostitute yourself, betray the man who’s paying you, and maybe get
caught and die with a poison needle in your arm, so that your little nephew and
your father and your brother and his wife, and my wife and my two children, and
Jenny and her children, and our whole country can have some kind of chance to
fight these evil sons of bitches off and survive as free people with some kind of
future besides the sewer I’ve seen all around me since I’ve come here. That’s what
I am asking you to do, so don’t feel bad about yourself, because regardless of the
reason, that makes me just as rotten as you. That also means I don’t have any right
to judge you, Georgia. I wouldn’t anyway, because you’re not responsible for what
this filthy society made you into. You have a chance now to change what you are,
when this is over and you Come Home, and you have a chance to make sure that
Allura never goes through what you had to go through, but only if the Republic
survives. I’m not just asking for your sake or mine, but for millions of free white
people who are threatened with death and slavery, but I don’t care why you do it.
Please, Georgia!”
She was silent for a long time. “I don’t know if I can,” she finally whispered.
“Bobby, thanks for listening to my little monologue just now, but I’m afraid you
still don’t get it. I’m fucked up, Bobby. My life, my head, my heart, my addictions,
my whole life, everything about me is fucked up like a Chinese fire drill.”
“Well, you just made a racial joke,” he pointed out. “That shows your mind
isn’t completely under control, and that’s a start.”
“Do I get to go to some kind of spy school?” she asked. “I guess you must
have done.”
“I got a kind of crash course when they sent me Out Here, yes.”
“That was a serious question,” she responded. “What exactly will I have to
do? How the hell am I supposed to be a spy, a real one? I don’t even watch spy
movies on TV or disc. I always thought they were boring and silly.” She got up
and went to a drawer in the glass-fronted liquor cabinet. She opened it and pulled
out an old-fashioned Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum detective revolver, stainless
steel and with a three-inch snub barrel and a black Pachmayr grip. “I have my own
gun, but do I get a silencer with it?” she giggled. “I’ve never seen a silencer
outside of a movie.”
“You can’t really silence a revolver too effectively,” said Bob, taking it from
her. “These older pieces are hard to silence to begin with, because unless the
weapon is manufactured to take a specially fitted suppressor you have to thread the
muzzle and screw it on to seal off the expanding gases from the cartridge, which is
what makes the gun go bang. See the gap here between the cylinder and the barrel?
Gas and powder ash from the round firing escapes out that way, and they still make
a bang loud enough to be heard. Plus they cover your hands with GSR, gunshot
residue, which can be detected by a forensic unit in about five seconds if they run a
test on your hand, and they’ll know you’ve fired a gun recently. You’d need an
automatic that’s been engineered to take a silencer. We’ve got a lot of those, but
you won’t be given one because there’s no way you’d be able to get a gun into the
White House past the metal detectors, the sniffer dogs, and the X-ray scanners.”
“Cool, real spy stuff, huh?” said Georgia with a smile. “So you don’t want
me to blow the president and then blow him away?”
“No, we’re not asking you to assassinate Hunter Wallace or anyone else,
Georgia. We know you’re not up for that. Neither are we asking you to steal or
photograph any secret plans or classified documents, or plant any listening devices,
or listen at keyholes. That’s too dangerous. You’ll be in an environment that’s
monitored twenty-four-seven from the Secret Service control room in the subbasement, both audio and visual, and they’d pick up on any suspicious behavior
right away. We’re asking you to go in there and be the best, uh, personal services
assistant you can be, stay on everybody’s good side, keep your ears open, and
report back to us and let us know what you hear and see. Everyone who meets with
Wallace, some idea of what was discussed if you can give it to us, everything you
can pick up from pillow talk or just overhear in the corridors and the ladies’ room,
White House gossip, anything to do with the security arrangements or protocol,
what the general morale and mood is like, the whole nine yards. Every few days
you will meet with me, or sometimes with one of two other people you will be
introduced to. There will be a woman named Betsy who can help you out with the
more intimate stuff if you want, and a guy we call the Zombie Master. Then we’ll
go over what you have seen and heard. You will be given some emergency phone
codes and some numbers where you can text or call out and let us know in code if
anything major is happening, but you need to use those only in an urgent situation,
because every call out of the White House is monitored and recorded.”
“And if they catch me?” asked Georgia. “Will you guys stage a raid with SS
commandos in ski masks and machine guns and rescue me?”
“No,” he told her with brutal honesty. “There is no way we could raise the
necessary muscle and intel to do anything like that, break into the White House or
the National Security Facility in the FBI building where you would be taken. If you
are detected, you will be arrested and charged with treason and espionage if they
decide to do it in public, but most likely they won’t. Most likely you will simply be
taken to the cellars below the FBI building, where you will disappear. You will be
interrogated, and if you don’t break down and tell them everything immediately,
they’ll beat you first, a very scientific and precise beating that will break some of
your non-essential bones and will hurt worse than anything you can imagine. If
you still refuse to talk you will be tortured, the good old-fashioned waterboard if
they have a weakness for the classics, then the Dershowitz needles. In the unlikely
event you still won’t break, they’ll get creative. Maybe the electric chair, maybe
dentists’ drills, maybe a medieval device called the strappado. Don’t ask. They had
five years during the War of Independence to refine their techniques, and a lot of
those interrogators are still working for DHS and the Bureau. The NVA used to ask
captured Volunteers to hold out for only twenty-four hours to give them the time to
break down and move anything and anyone the captured individual could betray.
Nobody was expected to hold out longer than that, although some like Cathy Frost
did, to their eternal honor and the glory of our nation. We don’t expect you to hold
out that long. I understand that you will betray me, and if I don’t get a chance to
say so later on, I will forgive you with all my heart and implore your own
forgiveness for doing this to you. On my part, I think I can give our guys their
twenty-four hours, but we’ll see how that plays out. Afterwards we will both be
executed, probably in secret. Your mom and Allura will never know what
happened to you, although they may guess.”
“Wow,” said Georgia, shaking her head. “That’s quite a sales pitch! How
can I resist?”
“Would you rather I lied to you?”
“No.” She looked up at him. “And if it works? If we can somehow stop
Hunter Wallace from launching a war against the Republic, or win it if he does?”
“Then that little boy you saw on the screen just now will grow up among his
own kind, in a free land. So will Allura. When we think it’s time and you’ve done
all you can, I will take you both home to Montana, and there won’t be any more
bad dreams.” Bob picked up the revolver and broke open the cylinder; he saw one
single round inside. “And you will be able to find something better to do with your
time than playing Russian roulette.” He pressed the extractor pin and dropped the
cartridge into his palm, then stuck it in his pocket. “I’ll hang on to this. I suppose I
should hang on to the whole weapon to make sure you don’t do something stupid,
but one of the fundamental principles of the Republic is the right to bear arms, and
nobody has the authority to abridge that right. It’s one of the things that makes us
different from them. It’s who we are.”
“I don’t do it a lot,” she protested feebly. “Just sometimes when I’m really
high or drunk.”
“You shouldn’t be doing it at all, and I ought to slap you silly for even
thinking about it,” he told her. “But I suppose that really would be poor
salesmanship. I don’t expect you to say yes right away, Georgia. Take some time
to think about it, but do me a favor? Lay off the weed and the booze for one night
while you do. A decision like this needs a clear head.”
“No need,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“That was quick,” said Bob, startled. “You sure?”
“It’s the same game I play with that gun, only in a much bigger league,” said
Georgia. “Bobby, some nights I look at that poem over there on the wall for a long
time, and I want to put all six bullets in that piece. Or take a few too many pills, so
the sailor really can come home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill. If
it weren’t for Allura I probably would have. I just don’t want her to grow up
thinking I abandoned her, and I don’t want to leave her to Amber and Marvin to
raise, because I know what she’ll turn out to be like. But I want my life to end,
Bobby, one way or another. I can’t stand it anymore. I’ve had enough. I want this
life to be over, either because it’s really ended in death, or because I somehow start
over from scratch. America won’t let me do that.”
“Why didn’t you say to hell with it and just Come Home before this?” asked
Bob curiously. “Thousands of people do, every year. They find some way to Come
Home legally or else they run the McCurtain, but with all the money you’ve had
access to, you could have bribed your way into a tourist permit or something like
that. A lot of people do it that way.”
“Yeah, well, the Office of Northwest Recovery issues those permits, and
they’ve gotten wise to that,” said Georgia. “They wouldn’t have let me take Allura,
and neither would Amber and Marvin. They would have read that one like a book.
And I won’t lie to you, it all just seemed so hopeless, so…I didn’t learn much in
school, but one passage from Shakespeare stuck in my mind:
“How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
‘Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed;
Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.”
“Hamlet,” said Bob, recognizing the lines.
“Yeah,” said Georgia. “I don’t know why I remember it. I must have been
straight that day in class, for once. But that’s pretty much how I felt. I thought
about snatching Allura and heading Northwest and smashing through the
McCurtain, but it was just a fantasy. Just too lazy or too ground down. I could
never imagine actually trying it.”
“That’s how my wife and her family got Home,” said Bob. “It was about the
same time Amber snatched you. It’s ironic. You and Millie both had the same
experience in a way, only in reverse. But her family didn’t sleep in any Sheratons
or Holiday Inns along the road. When this is over and you’re Home, you’ll meet
her and you can compare notes.”
“Okay, so tell me exactly how I get to become a spy?” demanded Georgia
briskly.
“The first thing you’re going to have to do is adopt the old NVA General
Order Number Ten,” said Bob sternly. “The booze and the grass and the pills have
to go, Georgia. That worries me. You’re not just risking your own life now when
you get high, now you’re risking mine and Kevin Junior’s. You’ll have to do it
cold turkey, too. No rehab. No expensive spas and counseling and therapy. You’re
going to have to just stop, because your will is stronger than the chemicals. Can
you do it, Georgia? Can you beat that stuff?”
“I think so,” she said. “Because now, for the first time in my life, I have
something better to do.”
***
The next day Bob/Richie and Vincent Cardinale met with Doctor Jake
Shapira, aka the Zombie Master, in his carpeted and mahogany-paneled office in
the Watergate complex. Shapira was a real psychiatrist running a high-end D.C.
practice under a false Jewish name. The degrees on his wall from Hofstra and
Johns Hopkins Universities more or less replicated his actual qualifications, and
they would check out impeccably in the face of any inquiry. An entire background
history and public record had been constructed by the WPB computer hacking
team for “Jacob Shapira,” down to grade school records from New York and video
clips from his eighth birthday party on his personal web site. All of his records
were verifiable and cross-referenced; if anyone looked in the online versions of the
Brooklyn telephone directory from forty years before or his college yearbooks,
they would find him. The actual printed yearbook or telephone directory would
show a discrepancy, but no one ever bothered to hunt up original paper documents
anymore. It entailed too much effort. In his own way, Doctor Jake Shapira was as
real as Winston Smith’s “Comrade Ogilvie” from 1984. The Surveillance State had
a lot of gaping holes in it.
“I’ve been able to wrangle approval from the White House to take on Ms.
Myers as a patient,” said the Zombie Master, a dapper little man in his late forties.
“It’s standard operating procedure with the president’s personal services assistants
to have them in government-approved therapy for the duration of their contracts
anyway. She’s already had a lifetime of therapists as it is, and I can glom their
records, which will give me a good overview of her. Ironically, I’ll be reporting on
her both to the Secret Service and the Office.”
“Why do they call you the Zombie Master?” asked Bob curiously.
“Behold my book of magic spells,” said the psychiatrist, waving his
prescription pad in the air. “I use it to turn a lot of the most powerful people in
Washington D.C., into zombies. My patient list includes some of the most
influential people in America: Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle,
senior civil servants and policy makers, top Pentagon brass, a couple of Supreme
Court justices and a lot of federal judges, scads of FBI agents and lesser fry,
business leaders, media people, and of course all their spouses and kiddies. I listen
to their moronic problems, nod and tut sympathetically, tell them they are way too
overworked and underappreciated, then I put them on a variety of medication
cocktails that affect their judgment and thought processes in the long run. Nothing
obvious, nothing that will send them into a psychotic break and make them go
berserk with a ginsu knife in Trader Vic’s or anything like that, just enough to
render their thinking fuzzy, induce short-term memory lapses and impede the parts
of the brain dealing with creative and deductive reasoning. A slight dose of
artificially induced Alzheimer’s. I don’t drive them crazy, just make them a little
more stupid than most of them already are. Plus there’s the incredible mine of
information they provide for the Office.”
“We’re bringing in the doc here for two reasons,” said Cardinale. “First, he’s
a real shrink and he needs to keep a close eye on Belladonna, and make sure she
stays off the booze and the dope, and doesn’t go bonkers under the pressure, which
is gonna be heavy.”
“Yeah, heavier than anything she’s ever undergone in her life,” said Bob. “I
admit, I’m worried. She seems to be committed to it now, but that’s just based on
one meeting, and I have no way of knowing what happened after I left. She’s
damned unstable. She may have poured a bottle of vodka down her throat and lit
up a joint the minute I was out the door, or she may already have gotten the heebiejeebies and called the FBI on me.”
“That’s why we don’t introduce her to the Doc here until she’s been inside
Sixteen Hundred for a few weeks and we see how she’s holding up,” said
Cardinale. “He’s an asset we can’t place at risk unless we’re a little more confident
in her than we are now. If she can make it on her own for a bit, he’ll step in and
keep her head tuned up, although you’re the primary and you’ll always have to
bear the brunt of that. But the second reason we need her coming here to this office
is, well, this office.”
“Eh?” asked Bob.
“You are now sitting in one of the few places in Washington, D.C., that is
truly clean, in the electronic surveillance sense,” said the Zombie Master. “Doctorpatient confidentiality went out the window in so-called national security and
terrorism cases many years ago, of course—the DHS and FBI can simply walk into
a doctor’s office and take whatever records they want if a U.S. Attorney says it’s
terrorism-related—and the bugging of psychiatrists’ offices and consulting rooms
is now common practice, one DHS doesn’t bother to conceal much anymore. But
my patient list is so high-powered that a couple of years ago, when I found a DHS
bug in here, I was able to raise such unholy hell about it through my patients who
didn’t want their secret quirks and perversions on any government databases, that
they backed off and granted me an official waiver, which so far they seem to have
honored. Vince and one of his tech wizards do regular comprehensive sweeps just
to make sure, but we can use Georgia’s weekly meetings here in this office to do
her de-briefings free of any eavesdropping by unfriendlies.”
“Nowhere else is safe,” agreed Cardinale. “Not a restaurant or a chew-easy,
not a park, not a church, not the Lincoln Memorial, no place. They’ve got
directional mikes in the parks that can hear a squirrel fart. At first you alone, then
you and Betsy, and finally you and the living dead guy here, will have to debrief
her as completely as you can, wring every drop of information out of her like she
was a wet rag, then write up a summary and give it to me for encoding, encryption,
and transmission back to our friend from Down Under back in Olympia. Plus
you’ll have to hold her hand, calm her jitters, soothe her disgust at some of the
things she’ll be doing, pep up her morale, keep her on the straight and narrow and
send her back into that pervert’s bed bright-eyed and bushy tailed. And you’ll have
to do it all in an hour.”
“Fifty-five minutes,” said the Zombie Master.
“Under an hour, then,” said Cardinale. “We have to assume that Belladonna
will be under a lot of electronic surveillance and at least intermittent close
surveillance by FBI and Secret Service agents. It’s like she’ll always be on stage,
so every minute of her time has to be accounted for. We’ve diddled with the
Watergate cameras a bit, and we have laid out a special route for you to use
whereby you can enter the building by a back way, unseen. That’s when you’re
doing the debriefings here, which won’t be for the first couple of weeks. During
that preliminary time, you have to meet with her alone. As part of her contract, she
had to agree to the DHS putting fiber-optic minicams everywhere in her apartment
except for the bathroom, which fortunately is taking place today and not yesterday.
Damn, we were lucky she called in for her smokes when she did! Otherwise, it
would have been impossible for you to contact her without showing up on their
digital. Since we can’t figure out any way to get you into and out of the un-bugged
bathroom in her place without being spotted, we need to figure out some way for
you to get her alone before you start bringing her here.”
“I can make deliveries as Richie the buttlegger, like I did yesterday, but I
can’t see any excuse for Richie to hang around after he hands over the smokes and
takes her money,” said Bob.
“I’d like to keep you completely off their digital if possible,” said Cardinale.
“While she’s doing the Doughboy she’s going to be watched like a hawk, and
anybody who comes near her gets a file opened up on him. Your persona as Richie
Carroll will hold up to any ordinary online check, but still, we don’t want them
looking too close at you, or looking at you at all if it can be helped. I think what
we’ll have to do is have you meet in certain restaurants and bars and parks, like in
the old Cold War days, but arrange for the surveillance to be interdicted long
enough for you to debrief. Happens all the time; these systems are as highly strung
as race horses and they’re always breaking down, especially since most of the
maintenance people these days are incompetent Third Worlders. I think one or two
mysterious camera outages as Belladonna is walking down the street wouldn’t be
overly suspicious, but we can’t do it too often. You made sure she has the burner
number and the substitution code?”
“I drilled them into her before I left,” said Bob. “She’s not dumb and I’m
sure she’s got it. I text her an innocuous code word, she calls me on the disposable
and false-FLECed cell, I give her the coordinates for a corner in the city which she
then decodes in her mind, and we meet there in either an hour or half an hour
depending on her situation.”
“Okay, on Tuesday morning, after her first night of presidential passion,
we’ll get you two together at a taqueria I know on Constitution,” said Cardinale.
“Duke and I will work out a camera disruption sequence that will look natural, like
a rat chewed through a cable or something. We’ll try to give you an hour of down
time. You’ll need it. This is going to be the morning after her first Hail to the
Chief, and from what I gather of that son of a bitch’s bedside manner, she may be
pretty shaken.”
“I can imagine,” said Bob.
“That’s the problem,” said Cardinale grimly. “You won’t have to imagine.
She’ll probably tell you.”
The intercom buzzed on Shapira’s desk. “That’s my next patient. Bagwell,
the Secretary of Defense. By the way, Vin, I’m working on something with him.
He’s undergoing hypnosis therapy for transvestite and other deviant urges, and I’m
carefully planting post-hypnotic suggestions in his mind. I think it’s possible that
when the shit does hit the fan, and I say a special trigger word to him, I can turn
him into a chicken.”
The meeting on Tuesday went off without a hitch. It was a fine spring day,
and Georgia looked breathtaking in a golden yellow Easter dress and broad hat. All
she did was shrug. “Yeah, he’s a freak,” she told Bob. “But I’ve done worse.”
***
Two days later and three thousand miles away on the opposite coast, in
Olympia, the intercom on President Henry Morehouse’s desk buzzed. It was
Annette Sellars, his personal secretary. “Yes, Annette?”
“Mister President, General Barrow is here to see you.”
“He’s my three o’clock. Why is he early?” asked Morehouse.
“He says it’s important,” said Annette.
“He knows where the door is,” said Morehouse. The door opened and the
Security Minister came in, grinning. “I hope that cheery mug denotes good news,
Frank,” said the president. “We could use some.”
Barrow slapped a file down on Morehouse’s desk in front of him. “Damned
good news! Charlie Randall just sent this over. First NAR humintel report ever
from inside the White House! Operation Belladonna is up and running. She’s in,
Red! We got her in!”
XI. The Carrion Crows
(Twelve years and seven months after Longview)
How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is't you do?
-Macbeth – Act IV, Scene 1
On a warm spring day in May, with the D.C. cherry blossoms in full bloom
outdoors along the Potomac and the Ellipse, the United States executive and
military command team for Operation Strikeout assembled in the Situation Room
in the White House for a progress briefing on how they would restore truth, justice,
and the American way to the Mordor of evil that was the Northwest Republic.
No corner of the White House with the exception of the Oval Office itself
starred in more movies and television shows than the Situation Room, the
presidential decision center under the main floor of the West Wing. Hollywood
imagines the situation room as a beehive of activity, where grim and dignified
presidents command covert operations around the world. In reality, it was
something of a high-tech dungeon full of scurrying rats. The main situation room
had six huge flat-screen televisions mounted on the walls for secure video
conferences, satellite-linked through state-of-the-art technology to generals and
prime ministers around the globe. White House technologists settled on NEC
plasma flat-screens for the president’s main conference room and LCD screens in
the remainder of the chamber. The main room had less mahogany and more 21st
century whisper wall than the private conference room, which is where today’s
meeting was taking place. There were five secure video rooms and a direct, secure
feed to Air Force One. In the main room, the watch officers from every branch of
the service were arrayed on two tiers of curved computer terminals that could be
fed both classified and unclassified data from around the country and the world.
While Secret Service agents or uniformed Protective Service officers always
confiscated cellular phones and two-way pagers that could serve as bugging
devices, the situation room left nothing to chance. It had sensors embedded in the
ceilings that could pick up cellular signals and alert the guards if anyone was
attempting to transmit anything from the room.
Operation Strikeout was D-minus forty-some-odd days and counting now,
and they hadn’t even decided on the final date for the attack yet. Withholding that
crucial detail even from his own troops was the Commander-in-Chief’s own idea.
He thought it was brilliant. He called it “tactical flexibility”; the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and all of the other field grade officers in the military called it
moronic moronic and indicative of how little Hunter Wallace understood about the
logistic realities involved in moving huge numbers of troops and vehicles and
massive amounts of materièl around out in the real world. They called it “the
damned Doughboy playing soldier,” although not where the DHS’s listening
devices could overhear them.
Of course, it was not unheard-of in military history to plan major operations
within a loose window of a few days or even weeks, but there were way too many
other loose ends, half-assed aspects, slipshod logistics and vagaries about Strikeout
that bothered the brass. The generals attempted without success to explain to the
president that there was a difference between flexibility and sloppiness. One Air
Force three-star said, “I understand the Northmen require in their Constitution that
their president be a military veteran. Now we know why.” He made that remark in
the bar of Pentagon officers’ mess after his third martini, and it was picked up on a
hidden microphone. The three-star was now a lowly private waiting in a cell in
Fort Belvoir for his secret military tribunal. Most likely, he wouldn’t get the
needle, but a trip to a penal coalmine in Pennsylvania was probably in his future,
pour encourager les autres.
This core group meeting today in the Situation Room consisted first and
foremost of U.S. President Hunter Wallace himself. The Doughboy was a pallid,
lumpish, middle-aged man with hair so blond as to be almost white, and eyes that
were technically blue, but in reality so pale as to be nearly colorless. It was as if
nature had started to make an albino, and then changed her mind.
Wallace was always nattily well-dressed in carefully tailored clothing,
everything from formal tuxes to crisp and gleaming tennis whites as the occasion
demanded, and his hair received a thousand-dollar coiffure every other day from a
stylist employed by the White House for the sole purpose of maintaining
presidential spiffiness. He could not, in all honesty, be called fat. That was a tribute
to a delegated White House dietician whose sole function it was to ensure that
nothing that was not green, leafy, crunchy, or all three passed his lips or was even
present at his table; the White House waiters were instructed to keep sweets
physically out of his reach at all times during state dinners. Of course, meat was
illegal these days in America, a prohibition no more honored in the White House
kitchen than anywhere else. The Jewish staff all kept personal stashes of burgers,
brisket, chicken and unlawful pizza toppings in the kitchen refrigerators which
they gave or sold to their fellow employees, but the word had been laid down long
ago by presidential Press Secretary and minder Angela Herrin: President Wallace
gets hold of so much as a single slice of pepperoni, and someone’s job is out the
window. Wallace underwent a strict regimen of workouts in the White House gym
supervised by a personal trainer who was authorized to literally drag him out of
meetings if necessary, and make sure he got in an hour a day on the treadmill and
swam fifty laps in the pool minimum, thereby maintaining an acceptable
photogenic minimum of lean body mass, muscle tone, and definition in his limbs.
Yet one could somehow tell by looking at him that Hunter Wallace’s body
yearned achingly to go to seed. He was one of those people who’d been struggling
with a weight problem all his life, and was only barely staying on top of it through
grueling, frantic exercise combined with a near starvation diet of rabbit food. One
got the impression that if Wallace so much as looked at a slice of cheesecake his
waist size would go up an inch, and if he ever slipped up and ate a single Danish
pastry or bowl of ice cream, he would blow up into a blimp and burst the buttons
on his Armani suit jacket. Even so inveterate a Wallace-hater as Vinnie Skins
found it difficult not to sympathize a little. After reviewing one intelligence report
he commented, “That Jew bitch don’t let the poor bastard eat nothing but broccoli
and carrot juice. Plus he ain’t got no balls. No wonder he’s fucked up in the head!”
The Vice President of the United States was Hugh Jenner, a lean and acerbic
former Senator from Oregon in his sixties who did his daily laps and handball
sessions not out of sheer necessity like the president, but because he enjoyed
exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Jenner was a former insurance executive and
investment banker from Portland who had considered Northwest Finance Minister
Ray Ridgeway to be a business rival before the War of Independence, and who
now loathed him to the point of madness. Needless to say, Jenner had spent the
entire past twelve years bellowing at the top of his lungs for something along the
line of Operation Strikeout in order to recover his state, as well as his 35-room
mansion on Skyline Boulevard in Portland. The mansion had been destroyed by
shellfire during the Battle of Portland, and the Republic had built a local clinic on
the site staffed by pediatric nurses, paramedics, and nurse practitioners from the
National Medical Service. Jenner’s dream ever since had been to tear down the
clinic and rebuild his former home down to the last detail.
Hugh Jenner’s Northwest origins had been his ticket onto the ticket, so to
speak, at the last combined convention where Democrats and Republicans had met
under the auspices of One Nation Indivisible to sort out the ONI Bipartisan Unity
Nomination which effectively meant the presidency, although the formality of
running a November election against a few minor third and fourth party candidates
and eccentric billionaire independents was always scrupulously observed. When
Hunter Wallace had raised Jenner’s hand beside him at the cheering convention he
had said, “Hugh, I promise you that the next time this convention meets, you will
be watching it from your own living room in Portland!” This set off a brief flurry
of punditory speculation from the cable news talking heads as to what exactly
Wallace meant by the remark, before a few phone calls from the ONI National
Committee and a few heavy-handed FBI visits caused the pundits to find other
things to talk about.
The other attendees at today’s briefing were bureaucratic as opposed to
electoral products of the American system of government as it had come to be.
Marlon Bagwell, the Secretary of Defense who was also the Zombie Master’s
patient, was a large and overweight man with a seamed boozer’s face and four
decades in Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and the private sector under his wellstretched belt. He was one of those uniquely American polymaths and political
chameleons who moved effortlessly between boardroom, government office and
media studio. Bagwell’s face just kept popping up everywhere on screens for years
until everybody knew him: a cable talk show here, a Congressional hearing there,
an ambassadorship to London and an energy consortium chairmanship in Houston,
a media interview on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on his recent
appointment to head up the latest neo-conservative or sometimes liberal think tank
in D.C. But Bagwell was not just a yes-man to the people in power: he was a fixer,
an able sergeant major who, once he picked his general of the moment, could get
things done for him. He was the ideal man to provide civilian oversight of the
reconquest of the Northwest. He was able, efficient, and as far as anyone knew,
Marlon Bagwell had never in his life entertained anything remotely resembling a
political or moral principle.
White House press secretary Angela Herrin and White House chief of staff
Ronald Schiff were the two acknowledged Hofjüden at the presidential court, but
the situation with them was more complex than it first appeared. In theory, the
chief of staff was a much more powerful office that that of press secretary, but
appearances were deceiving. Of the two, the raven-haired and statuesque Angela
Herrin was actually the primary contact and conduit between the U.S. government
and world Jewry, in whose hands was still concentrated such massive wealth that
while the loss of the state of Israel was a crushing blow to Jewish morale, in the
practical sense it was little more than a blip on the Tribe’s total balance sheet. She
was 35 years old, born Angela Herrnstein on a kibbutz outside Herzliya, and a
lifelong Mossad agent who didn’t admit to being Jewish at all. She had a fake
Episcopalian background and past life every bit as mendacious and every bit as
well documented as the Zombie Master’s, except courtesy of a different crew of
crack computer hackers. It was not true that it was impossible to hide or keep any
secrets in Hunter Wallace’s Surveillance State; you just had to be tech-savvy and
well-connected to do it.
Angela kept a low profile outside her White House press briefings; her
Lincoln Town Car was armored and bomb-proofed but very discreet, and she relied
on her burly Israeli-born Secret Service agent and chauffeur Motti as her lone
bodyguard. Motti lived in a garret over her fortified and high-security brownstone
in the discreet neighborhood of Brookland, occasionally going downstairs to the
master bedroom either to sleep in the king-sized bed with his boss, or to remove
other unwanted male bodies from that bed, sometimes alive and sometimes dead.
Angela’s sexual tastes were straight enough, but tended even more toward the
bizarre than Hunter Wallace’s.
Ronald Schiff, the paunchy and balding White House Chief of Staff, was
openly Jewish down to his Yiddish accent and the knitted blue kipa on his nut. He
not only provided the administration’s necessary public genuflection to the Tribe’s
power, but also acted as more or less a decoy to turn attention away from Angela
Herrin, who so far as most people knew was the Barbie Doll spokesperson for the
administration wielding only the power and influence of a press secretary, and
supposedly was nowhere near the decision-making process. They all hoped (in
vain) that this arrangement was able to fool foreign intelligence agencies,
especially the Northwest War Prevention Bureau.
Schiff was aware of the fact that part of his function was to draw hostile fire
away from Angela in the sense of media attention and Congressional political
scrutiny as well as bullets and explosives, and it made him paranoid. He always
traveled with an entourage of Secret Service bodyguards second only to the
president’s, and he resented Angela mightily for the inconvenience. In public
Schiff was cool, calm, witty and supercilious, earning himself the media nickname
of the “Iron Chancellor” in a fawning Bismarckian reference. In reality he never
quite pulled it off; he actually came across as a little ridiculous. Schiff tried to be
Henry Kissinger but only made it as far as Jackie Mason. In private, he was a
bundle of nerves and neuroses, apprehensive about maintaining his position, and
terrified of Muslim and Northwest assassins under his bed. The Zombie Master had
been carefully angling and trying to get Schiff onto his couch as a patient for some
years, but without any luck. Schiff’s own father had been a psychiatrist, and so
Schiff hated the breed. He preferred to spill his guts to $50,000-per-night hookers
in expensive hotel rooms. A number of these sessions the WPB station had been
able to bug in advance, thanks to Betsy’s contacts among the capitol’s high-end
professional women. It had been from one such late night intíme that the Circus
had first heard the name Operation Strikeout, and realized its significance.
Admiral Hector Brava, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a lean and
sour-faced Annapolis graduate with a salt and pepper moustache. A white man
with a Hispanic name, he had traded on it to get into Annapolis and to some degree
in order to gain promotion during his early years. It bothered and shamed him that
he had done so, because unlike many people at the top of the American shitheap,
Brava was actually half-way competent, both as a sailor and as a military tactician.
Significantly, he was the only member of the inner circle besides the Oregonian,
Vice President Jenner, who had any reservations about Operation Strikeout. Not
about the actual idea of invading the Republic itself, but concerns about the
increasingly slipshod way in which it was being done.
The same could not be said of Secretary of State David “Gator” Modlin.
Modlin was a pipsqueak, a little man with watery eyes, a weak chin, and football
moustache comprising eleven hairs on each side. He had never actually served in
the military himself. No one quite knew how such an ineffectual individual had
ever gained the nickname of “Gator.” In fact, Modlin had bestowed it on himself,
and regularly paid media people under the counter to use it. He was a total political
timeserver who had slithered his way to the top, because he had never found a
single moneyed and politically powerful ass so rotten or so odoriferous that he
would not apply his lips to it. Modlin bullied and hectored his subordinates, firing
and transferring them for no reason other than the fact that they irritated him in
some way, while at the same time he groveled to the president and anyone who
might be in a position to hurt or help him.
Secretary of Northwest Recovery Janet Chalupiak was a six-foot-two, 280pound lesbian with a face like a buffalo, and burning eyes, which gave away the
fact that she was very nearly insane. In her youth, before the War of Independence,
she had been a student at the University of Montana. There she and the late
Professor Linda Barnard, not yet a full professor, had conducted a lengthy liaison.
The two of them had scratched each other’s backs by each filing sexual
discrimination and harassment lawsuits against White male faculty members whom
the other viewed as standing in their way. Both men were stripped of tenure and
their lives and careers ruined, and one of them committed suicide when his wife
left him as well. Linda moved up and got the dead man’s tenure, Janet received a
poke full of cash from the university’s settlement, a brilliant academic record and a
job recommendation to the Justice Department that got the lesbian lass the hell out
of Red Lodge, and she had never looked back.
The whole experience had been deliciously empowering, and when Janet
heard in the months after Longview that Linda had been hanged by Force 101, it
sent her into a frenzy of hatred and lust for revenge against everything in the world
that was white, male, heterosexual and thereby evil. It was Janet Chalupiak who
had begun a program of selected assassinations within the Northwest Republic
several years before. ONR agents had conducted a short campaign of shooting,
sniping, and car-bomb attacks in the name of a non-existent group called
“Northwest Rainbow,” allegedly seeking reunification with the United States.
Several county sheriffs, judges, and Party officials had been murdered as well as
some of their family members. BOSS and the Civil Guard’s CID quickly tracked
down and eliminated the terrorists, with the help of an enraged and alert populace
who left the ONR ops no place to run or hide. Then it was the Republic’s turn.
ONR’s excursion into assassination provoked such severe retaliation from
Olympia, including a car bomb that killed a Commerce Secretary and Janet’s own
deputy director, who had been found garroted in her home, that she had been
ordered by the president and the rest of the cabinet to stop before things got out of
hand. Now nursing a sense of grievance against the administration she felt had
failed to have her back in her personal vendetta against the Northwest Republic,
Janet Chalupiak was the most impassioned backer of Operation Strikeout.
Rounding off the team was the obligatory Strong Black Woman, one
specimen of whom had become a traditional feature of every administration since
Condoleezza Rice. It was customary to give each “Condi” a big office in the West
Wing and pile her desk up with huge stacks of reports on iron ore production in
Outer Mongolia, or Pentagon war game scenarios involving an Italian blockade of
the Faroe Islands, so forth and so on. Usually the SBW would spend a few weeks
trying to wade through it all and pretending that she had a clue, then she would get
the message and leave her office and the mountain of crap on her desk gathering
dust, while she hit the talk shows and cocktail parties, the state dinners and photoop circuit for the rest of the administration, Meanwhile the faceless white drudges
in the pastel shirts and ties who actually had some idea of what they were doing
handled all the actual policy wonk stuff.
But Kanesha Knight had seen Foxy Brown over 30 times as a little girl, so
she wanted to be a spy. In exchange for keeping the Black Congressional Congress
in line for ONI for some years, when her turn came to be Condi she demanded and
got the job of director of the CIA. Always overrated as an intelligence agency from
the very time of its equally overrated OSS origins, the once famed Company had
by now been almost entirely supplanted in the foreign humintel field by other
agencies or what were euphemistically known as “subcontracting nongovernmental organizations,” i.e. mercenaries who were paid piecework rates for
hard results and who were therefore incentivized to do some actual spying and get
the real scoop. The CIA did nothing much anymore these days except collate these
mercenaries’ data and perform satellite photo analysis; the actual heavy lifting of
spying on the Northwest Republic was done by the Office of Northwest Recovery,
some military analysts, some NGOs and also by a few free agents, some of them
kooky Christian Zionist “volunteers” who actually served something of a purpose,
since they wasted more of BOSS’s time than all the other actual spying combined.
So Kanesha had been given the CIA, providing a standard affirmative action
two-fer, black skin and tits, and thus the ritual proof of Hunter Wallace’s love of
diversity and the Gorgeous Mosaic. At first, she had done little harm, but then
Kanesha accidentally found out about Operation Strikeout and the command
conferences and she wanted in, having a vague notion that invading somewhere
was something the CIA needed to be involved in. She threatened to file a sexual
and racial discrimination lawsuit against the administration if she were not
included in the strategy meetings.
This forced the administration to a hasty decision as to whether to admit
Kanesha to the Situation Room and risk her blabbing off at the bubble lips, or have
her assassinated in order to make sure the secrecy of Strikeout was not
compromised. After some nattering with Angela Herrin, Ronald Schiff, and Janet
Chalupiak, Hunter Wallace decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
He would include Kanesha in the planning phase, and give her some make-work to
do. He would go behind her back and retain some properly instructed and
remunerated CIA personnel over at Langley to keep an eye on her and make sure
she didn’t totally blow the gaff on Operation Strikeout. Then about three weeks
before the invasion, Wallace would have Kanesha whacked by the special duty
detail of Secret Servicemen that American presidents traditionally used for such
janitorial work since the Vince Foster episode back in the 90s. Wallace’s hit squad
was headed by his own personal bodyguard, the formidable former Detroit
linebacker, Jimbo Hadding. Kanesha’s assassination would of course be laid to the
door of the dreaded WPB as part of the ongoing low-level grab-assing between the
two nations’ agencies that had recently escalated, thanks to Janet Chalupiak. Her
death would become the official excuse for the very invasion itself.
So the rest of the inner Strikeout circle, who were all in on the secret of her
coming demise, put up with Kanesha Knight’s presence at the meetings, dressed to
the nines and reeking of the perfume she apparently sloshed over her body by the
quart. They listened to her endless babble on a variety of topics of which she had
no understanding at all, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t have to put up
with her for too much longer.
It was difficult for them to refrain from laughing, though, when she went on
about the aliens. About a year before, some humorist in the WPB’s black ops
branch in Olympia had worked up a project wherein the CIA was carefully fed a
line of disinformation through foreign sources regarding Project Bluelight, Doctor
Joseph Cord’s plasma anti-aircraft weapons, which were then just going into the
prototype stage. The Circus knew that the CIA knew about the project, they just
weren’t sure what it was. The disinformation was to the effect that after Longview
the NDF had captured a secret U.S. government installation in Wyoming which
housed remains of wrecked UFOs and laboratories where scientists were trying to
reverse engineer the extraterrestrial technology, and that the plasma weapons were
the result of this technology. The wicked white scientists had of course defected to
the Republic, recycling the old Operation Paperclip liberal narrative, and they had
now possibly succeeded in putting the horrible Nazi regime in Olympia into
contact with the aliens who had originally visited earth in the UFOs. Therefore, it
would not be a good idea for the United States to attack the Northwest Republic,
because a flying saucer might appear over the White House and blow it up.
The WPB’s analyst had intended for this rumor to be a “glow-worm,” in
intelligence parlance a deliberately created canard or red herring serving two
purposes, to sow confusion and misdirection, and also to track and see where it
went, how far and how fast, and where it eventually turned up. But Kanesha
Knight had been reading supermarket tabloids since she was a child, she was an
absolute believer in UFOs, and she was now expending a good deal of the
resources of the CIA on trying to identify where the secret base with the alien
technology had been and what it might have contained. The CIA analysts she had
assigned to the job quickly figured out that the boss had been gulled by the WPB,
but since no one dared to tell her and risk loss of career, they spent their days in
their cubicles playing computer games or day trading on the stock market, and
writing up bogus reports based on internet UFO web sites.
“Can we at least set the date, Mister President?” asked Admiral Brava. “I
vote for June 21st, the longest day of the year. We might as well give our boys the
maximum amount of daylight to fight by.”
“Joshua prayed to the Lord and stopped the sun in the sky, so the Children of
Israel could keep on fighting,” said Kanesha Knight, her exquisite enunciation
reflecting the common negroid misconception that pronouncing clearly was the
same as speaking intelligently.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, could you refresh my memory? What army group is
Joshua commanding again?” asked Vice President Jenner politely.
“I’m holding off on that until the last minute,” said President Wallace with
gravity. “No one can betray what even I don’t know.” While this was clearly true,
Wallace made it sound profound. From his early days as a Cognitive Dissonance
blogger, Hunter Wallace had mastered the art of speaking and writing deeply,
profoundly, and impressively, while saying nothing. He could and often did write a
two-thousand word article or make an hour-long speech that imparted not one
single idea or piece of information, and yet he made it sound so good that it was
hours before his audience realized they’d been stroked, and many of them never
did—enough to keep voting him into office, at any rate. It was his greatest asset,
one that every politician in a democracy must hone to razor sharpness: the art of
baffling with bullshit where he could not dazzle with brilliance.
“Can we assume June 21st as a ballpark date, Mister President?” persisted
Brava wearily. “A guesstimate? A definite maybe?”
“Perhaps,” said Hunter Wallace with an enigmatic smile. Brava gave up;
they’d had this discussion many times before and by now it was almost routine,
like the opening gambit of a chess match. The point of the running game for Brava,
Jenner, and Chalupiak was to pry as much information and possibly even a
decision or two out of President Wallace without landing themselves too deeply in
the excremental matter. The trick was to offer him credible deniability so that if
anything Wallace “suggested” went wrong, it would be officially someone else’s
idea. The problem was that electronic audio-visual minutes were being kept off the
videocam at one end of the table, and it was a lot harder to wiggle out of something
once it is recorded for all time as having been spoken, than it was back in the days
of simple written minutes.
Now Jenner gave Brava a subtle nod. “Mister President,” said Brava, “I
would like to re-visit the question of a fourth front along the northern part of the IFive corridor. There is still time to transfer at least two strategic bomber wings to
Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, and send at least ten mechanized brigades and six
or seven infantry brigades to Fort Greely and Fort Wainwright. The troops can then
move quietly down to the border so they can launch a co-ordinated fourth prong
down through British Columbia and over into the Repub—I mean, the racist entity,
at Bellingham. Then they drive right on to Seattle and Olympia. It will be
midsummer, and the weather in Alaska will be perfect for a move like that. The
Canadian government has already given its permission for us to use their territory
as a springboard for the invasion. What could be the problem with getting them on
board for an additional maneuver like this?”
“Well, let’s go over it again, since apparently you weren’t listening the first
four or five times,” said Wallace irritably. “You’re a military man, Admiral Brava,
and presumably you know how to read a map. I suggest you look at one of the
Puget Sound area, where you will notice something interesting. The city of
Vancouver, Canada, is practically right on top of enemy territory, as North
American distances go. A man with an especially powerful bladder and a good
wind behind him can piss in Seattle and hit downtown Vancouver. It is so close
that the Nazi Intelligence School on Whidbey Island occasionally takes trainees out
on live infiltration exercises to Victoria and Vancouver, much to the disgust of
those clowns at CSIS and the RCMP, who have yet to catch a single one of them.
They’re tired of getting theater ticket and valet parking stubs from Nanaimo and
Surrey showing up on their desks with Whidbey Island postmarks, especially since
there is no legal mail service between Canada and the racist entity, and neither
force has any idea who’s getting into their office to hand-deliver the letters. But to
return to the subject, our racist buddies have a little something called the V-Three
rocket. It’s actually more of a rocket-boosted glider. It’s very low-tech, doesn’t
even have an onboard guidance system…”
“Which means there is nothing we can jam, so we either shoot them down or
they deliver their payload,” said Brava. “Yes, sir, I am familiar with the V-Three.
They are slow compared to a Cruise missile, but four hundred and fifty miles per
hour on launch and approximately the same speed coming in after burnout is still
hard to hit without a high-tech defense system or a jet fighter. You can’t shoot one
of the damned things down with small arms. They are comparatively cheap to
manufacture, and our satellite and ground reports indicate that the NAR…”
“The racist homophobic entity!” shrieked Janet Chalupiak. “There is no
Republic of anything up there, and if you say that it sounds like you’re talking
about a real country!”
“All right, let’s revert back to the modus vivendi we reached the last time,
and just call it the Emerald City,” said Brava wearily.
“Fair enough,” said Hunter Wallace magnanimously. “The Emerald City and
its band of naughty munchkins are manufacturing more of these V-Threes even as
we speak. They’ve gone on a V-Three spree, see?” He giggled. “These weapons
are capable of lifting a thousand-kilogram payload. That’s two thousand two
hundred pounds, slightly over a ton, and that’s a lot of anthrax, a lot of phosgene or
mustard gas, or a lot of just plain high explosive. They have a range of over four
hundred miles, depending on the wind, but that means that from their firing
platforms in southern Oregon they can hit San Francisco and Sacramento with no
trouble.”
“They have no accuracy at all. They can’t even be aimed properly,” sniffed
Dave “Gator” Modlin.
“No, they can’t,” agreed Hunter Wallace. “But they can hit something the
size of a city, somewhere in town. Just a ton of bad shit, disease or explosive or
incendiary white phosphorus, dropping randomly out of the sky. In a way, that’s a
more effective terror weapon than a smart bomb or guided missile that one can
avoid by staying away from obvious targets. The Nazis don’t call them Flying
Bombs for nothing. Now, with a range of over four hundred miles, let us ask
ourselves, where else can these flying murder machines hit with total ease? And
the prize goes to—Vancouver, Canada! Yes, Vancouver, home of the largest
Chinese and other Asian population on the North American continent. Millions of
helpless victims for genocidal racist monsters to slaughter, simply for having the
wrong color skin. For some reason, the Canadian prime minister doesn’t want that
to happen. He seems to feel that it might impede his party’s chances in the next
general election.”
“It doesn’t signify, Mister President,” said Janet Chalupiak. “All of the Nazi
rocket launching bases will be wiped out by the Air Force in the first hour after
you give the order to go green. For heaven’s sake! The things are made out of
wood and canvas!”
“Well, some fiberglass as well,” said Kanesha Knight. “Fiberglass. I read
that somewhere.”
“Possibly in a report from your own agency?” replied Chalupiak, rolling her
eyes to the ceiling.
“Ah, but can we absolutely guarantee that will happen?” said President
Wallace. “I hate to sound skeptical of our Air Force, who have the best planes and
the best pilots in the world, and I am sure that General Bellows is correct when he
assures us that all those little annoying accuracy problems with the Cruise and
Tomahawks and Predators have been ironed out. They should be, since it now
costs almost fifty million dollars for us to fire even a single one. But can we
absolutely guarantee that a single V-Three full of phosgene won’t land in
Vancouver once the racists detect American troops passing through British
Columbia, coming to take away their shitty little country? I think not, and neither
does Prime Minister Simoneau. The Canadian government wants full plausible
deniability until after the racist entity has been defeated and occupied, then they
want to step forward and take their modest bow for having helped democracy
triumph. They don’t want the bad men taking any potshots at the Jewel of the
Western Orient. That means no Canadian ground troops and all Canadian
assistance has to stay on the QT until it’s safe to acknowledge their contribution.”
“The Canucks are yellow,” said Modlin contemptuously.
“The Canadian voters the government is concerned about keeping alive to
vote Liberal certainly are,” said Wallace dryly. “Admiral Brava, don’t worry, there
will be more than enough pressure on the racists from the west applied by your
colleagues in the navy. Five carriers is a hell of a lot of firepower: the JFK II, the
Kitty Hawk, the Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Delmar Partman and the Hornet.
Plus the missile subs Harriet Tubman and Jesse Jackson. We will flatten
everything west of the Cascades from Eugene to Bellingham; Seattle and Portland
and Olympia will be nothing but burning trash heaps in a junkyard, and our
ground-based planes and missiles will blast Boise and Spokane and Missoula into
powder until not one stone remains on the other, and racism will be but a bad
memory in the world. There is no need for a fourth infantry prong. American air
power is invincible; ground troops are just there to clinch the deal.”
Vice President Jenner tactfully refrained from reminding the President that
even under optimum conditions American air power, while often decisive in the
past, had historically been far from invincible, and the quality of their ground
troops had been America’s greatest military weakness since the Second World
War. “There is always the possibility that we are underestimating their partisan
unit defense strategy,” said the Vice President diplomatically.
Wallace grinned. “Ah, yes, the terrible NVA guerrillas of old, ten feet tall
with saber teeth, firing a machine gun in each hand while they leap through the
northern woods like giant kangaroos. I wondered when they would make their
appearance. I know the legend. Hugh, we’ve always known that was on the cards,
and we have let it deter us for too long. What has always been these gangsters’ big
threat that they level against us? That they will fight all of our high-tech weaponry
with low-tech, a simple bullet to the head of people who matter. That’s how they
beat us before, Hugh. When that guy lit that booby-trapped cigar and blew his own
head off at the dinner table right here in the White House and right in front of
Chelsea Clinton, she broke. They were sending America a message: no one is safe,
and America’s ruling class quailed before that message and surrendered. Now we
have to be man enough to answer it with come and do your worst, for you are an
abomination, and we will no longer allow you to be. They know full well that we
could have taken back the Northwest any time we wanted to do so during the past
twelve years, but we haven’t done so because we let them buffalo us. So they
threaten us with the one thing that the United States has traditionally feared more
than anything else, the one way that America has always been defeated in the
past—a long and drawn-out guerrilla war as we try to occupy a hostile country.”
“It won’t be hostile!” said Kanesha Knight. “We are the good guys! We will
be welcomed as liberators!”
“No, we will not be, Kanesha,” said Hunter Wallace firmly. “These are
white people who for almost half a generation now have been living on their own
and among their own, seeing only people who look like themselves, with no way to
compel them to confront and deal with diversity and multiculturalism. History
shows that white people won’t do that unless they are forced to do so by the power
of the state, so deeply is racism ingrained in us. You have no idea how seductive
that kind of evil can be. Remember, when I was doing my intelligence work, I used
to peddle that very same evil, and I never had to work very hard to make a sale.”
Wallace always referred to his days as a Cognitive Dissonance operative on the
internet for one of Cass Sunstein’s early White House internet disruption programs
as “intelligence work.” He liked sounding like a glamorous James Bond type.
Wallace went on, “They have tasted the fruit of the poisoned tree, Kanesha,
and I assure you, they will fight like the very devil rather than have that poisoned
fruit taken away from them and be forced to eat healthy again, in both the moral
and the dietary sense. Hell, never mind their racial hatred, some of them will fight
like hell just so they can commit obscenities like lighting up a carcinogen or
gorging on the flesh of a dead animal, as if humanity hasn’t progressed at all in the
past few thousand years and we were still predatory beasts living in caves. Their
big threat they use to terrorize us is that they will take us back to those last few bad
months before Longview when we were losing fifty soldiers and FATPOs a week,
and not so much as a dime of revenue was coming in from the Northwest, and
when the Northwest was draining the nation of money like a gigantic black hole.
My benighted predecessor gave in to certain pressures…”
Angela Herrin spoke up for the first time. “President Clinton the Third had
no choice. Israel was in danger, and Israel had to take priority,” she said flatly,
brooking no contradiction.
“Damn straight!” said the White House Chief of Staff, Ronald Schiff.
“Of course it did,” said Wallace smoothly. “But sadly, that pressure no
longer exists today, the Light Unto the Nations is no more, and so the United States
of America can concentrate on recovering her own lost sheep, so to speak. That
being said, there is a price we will have to pay. We weren’t ready to pay it before.”
President Wallace looked around the room gravely. “We all need to accept that just
as any rat will fight when cornered, these evil people are capable of targeting
individuals in this administration, not just because we are enemies, but on the
grounds of their color and gender alone. Perhaps even some of us in this room.”
Suddenly everyone else realized where the president was headed with this, and
they all gave Kanesha Knight a covert glance that she didn’t pick up on. The
director of the CIA was thinking about aliens, and whether they really flew down
in flying saucers that made beautiful music like in that Close Encounters movie.
***
After the meeting in the Situation Room, President Hunter Wallace returned
upstairs to the Oval Office and spent the next hour working, and doing so
productively. Whatever one could say about Wallace’s off-duty practices, and one
could say a great deal, no one denied that the man was a workhorse. He had to be;
the United States was in such terrible shape that a Bill Clinton-esque, hands-off
president who tried to phone it in simply couldn’t cut it any more.
In one hour, Wallace dictated a memo on shoring up the old Tennessee
Valley Authority electric power grid, which was now verging on total collapse
from years of neglect. He went over a speech his writers had produced for him to
give to the Israel Remembrance Association at a $200,000-a-plate fund-raising
dinner in New York next week. He checked his personal uncensored news feed
from CNN on his computer, a feed available to only a few high government
officials that reported what was actually going on in the world, and he made
several calls to various functionaries based on what he saw there. Wallace
conducted short personal meetings with the head of the NAACP and the head of
the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Right, five o’clock!” he said, rising up.
“Now for an hour of me time!” He punched the intercom, “Wanda, I have now
ceased to exist until six o’clock. You know the drill.”
“Yes, sir,” came his secretary’s voice. This was known among staffers as the
president’s “seventh inning stretch,” during which he disported himself with his
personal services assistant of the moment. She would afterwards retire via a back
staircase to the main bedroom in the residence itself, using her own special key
card to enter. A discreet Asian waiter, who in the tradition of thousands of years of
harem guards saw and heard nothing, would bring her supper at 6:30 p.m. There
she would await the main bedtime session, which could begin as late as midnight
depending on the president’s commitments for the evening. Afterward she might or
might not spend the night, at the commander-in-chief’s discretion, before departing
for her own home in an armored Secret Service limo. She reported back to the
White House at 4:00 p.m. sharp, in case seventh inning stretch came a bit early.
This routine went on seven days a week, although it was varied by weekend trips
to Camp David and frequent, exciting and luxurious travel to the far corners of the
earth on Air Force One. The world’s most famous jet was equipped with its own
“executive lounge” for stratospheric nookie.
Wallace strode over to the door of the original executive lounge and opened
it. Georgia Myers stood up from the sofa where she was reading a disarmingly
innocuous Harlequin romance, and she greet the president with a kiss. What
followed would have made the average Harlequin reader double over and vomit.
“He tappin’ dat blondie again,” said Secret Service Special Agent Jimbo
Hadding to his buttoned-down, buzz-cut detail commander, Special Agent Lee
Lyons.
“Tapping?” said Lyons dryly.
“Well, what he do,” said Jimbo. Hadding was a gigantic black man, six feet
five inches tall and three hundred pounds of ebony muscle, with a massive chest
and shoulders. He literally looked like a gorilla dressed in a Brooks Brothers
executive ensemble. When he stood straight, arms at his side, his knuckles almost
reached his knees. His IQ was room temperature on a good day, but he did have
two qualities that fitted him for his job: rare for a monkoid, he was a fairly good
pistol shot, and he was just intelligent enough to memorize Secret Service security
protocols and procedures and follow them to the letter, so long as nothing
disrupted his routine and he didn’t have to think. Hunter Wallace knew the PR
value of having a faithful and visible African-American appearing with him in
public, so he had cultivated Hadding and made a kind of protégé or pet out of him.
In return for his boss’s patronage, and a special permit to devour large amounts of
barbecued ribs and fried chicken in the White House mess, Hadding responded
with doglike devotion to his chief.
“I still don’t like the idea of him banging a Northwester, even a Cataclysm
survivor who lost her home to the enemy, and especially not now,” said Lyons in a
low voice. He was the one who had to do the thinking, and he didn’t like the
direction his thoughts were taking. Operation Strikeout wasn’t quite as top secret
as the command team liked to think; word had been trickling out for some weeks
now, and those outside the rarefied zone of the Situation Room whose job it was to
worry were concerned that rumors would reach the media soon. “I checked that
Halberstam bimbo out myself, full court press, and I recommended against her. A
few things were off. She doesn’t pass the sniff test.”
“Obviously she pass his sniff test,” replied the African with a wide, toothy
grin. Lyons ignored him.
“She’s a heavy stoner and she sleeps around, and that usually means
indiscreet. She had some neighbors down the street when she was a kid in
Missoula, some people named Campbell, and they were NVA. It would be okay if
she really was Jewish, but she’s not, her stepfather is. But the boss has been gaga
for her ever since he saw her at that reception at the Corcoran Museum. Told me
once she reminds him of his sister. He shouldn’t even have been talking to her that
night. We had her flagged because she was born in Montana, and he’s supposed to
follow our lead when we warn him off flagged individuals, but he didn’t this time.
I had a quiet word with him and he blew me off, then he insists on our starting the
PSA paperwork on her, when Carolyn’s contract still had six weeks to run.”
“We didden find nothin’ on de down-low,” said Hadding. “I ran her ass, too.
She jus’ a junkie ho.”
“She still makes my ass twitch, and not in a good way,” said Lyons. “I’m
keeping a close eye on her. I’m personally monitoring all her footage every minute
she’s in the building and she’s not in the two dead zones where she actually works.
You do that too, Jimbo. If that girl does anything that looks even a little off-kilter
to you, you come to me and let me know.”
“Mos’ def,” replied Hadding.
At six o’clock, President Hunter Wallace emerged from the executive
lounge smiling and adjusting his tie. Georgia slipped out a few minutes later, her
dress slightly disheveled as everyone expected it to be, and she strolled out of the
Oval Office through the rear corridor on her way to the East Wing and the
residence. Since she arrived, Georgia had fit right into both wings. She figured
everyone knew who she was and why she was there, so there was no need to be
coy about it. She had reached the point where she now had a few acquaintances
among the West Wing staff with whom she could nod and exchange a few words.
Already a few staffers were sidling up to her in the White House mess, as the
cafeteria was called, or in break rooms or her small cubicle where she played with
the computer sometimes, trying to get close to the maitresse en tître and pick up
some juicy gossip or information they could sell to the media, a traditional cottage
industry in the West Wing.
Georgia moved along a private staff corridor, a euphemism for a servant’s
passage that ran the length of the West Wing from the Oval Office behind the
Cabinet Room, the Roosevelt Room, and the Press Briefing Room. She was not
allowed to use the open walkway along the West Colonnade—too public. It would
have been possible for her to crack open a door and eavesdrop on Cabinet meetings
and on conversations in a number of private offices from the servant’s passageway,
except that it was completely covered with closed-circuit cameras and she assumed
audio mikes as well, and any lingering or suspicious behavior on her part would
have been instantly detected in the Secret Service control room.
The West Wing was connected to the Executive Residence in the East Wing
by the center hall on the ground floor. Georgia entered the East Wing with her pass
card. She nodded pleasantly to the uniformed Protective Services officer on the
duty desk, walked past the Map Room, the China Room, and the Diplomatic
Reception Room, then up the stairs past the first or State Floor and on to the
presidential master bedroom on the right, in the actual residence on the second
floor. She swiped her card and entered one of only two places in the entire White
House complex that was completely free of any audio or visual surveillance or
recording devices, the other being the “executive lounge” and its attached
bathroom and shower off the Oval Office.
Georgia now had some hours alone and unobserved, but the problem was
how to make use of that time. Not only did she have to collect every scrap of
information she could about what was going on in the White House, but she had to
get it out of the building and convert it into some kind of intelligible form and
order for Bobby Campbell. The simplest way to do this was just to verbally report
everything she saw or heard, but that was proving problematic. It was hard for her
to meet “Richie” anywhere in the District without being recorded on a spy camera
of some kind, and trips out of the self-contained Green Zone which had everything
government people needed for a hermetically sealed existence would draw
suspicion. Many federal employees now lived and worked for decades without
ever even going across the river to Arlington.
It was true the Office could arrange convenient outages when it was
necessary for them to get together for half an hour or so, but this could only be
done so often before somebody at DHS handling her routine VIP monitoring
would notice and report the quirky camera cut-offs to the Secret Service, which
would get them suspicious and lead to physical surveillance. Georgia had not yet
been taken to see the Zombie Master in his own surveillance-free bubble. She
could of course go into the White House wired for sound and video in a dozen
different ways, but there were all kinds of electronic sensors, frequency detectors,
body scans at all the entrances, and random security sweeps by Secret Service
techs seeking to detect any signs of surveillance (besides theirs) and any
transmission or unknown electronic device in operation. This was a tall order in a
building full of electronic communications devices of every known kind, and there
were ways around this, but the WPB had to be very careful, because Belladonna
was a diamond asset that could not under any circumstances be compromised
before she was able to fulfill her primary mission—not just White House gossip
and policy tittle-tattle, but hard details about the when and where and how of
Operation Strikeout.
The criminal techie geek Birdie had come up with a solution, acting on
Vinnie Skins’ request to come up with some way to get sensitive information such
as bills of lading and shipping schedules out of bonded tobacco and kosher meat
warehouses, which had anti-spying and hacking systems almost equivalent to those
in the White House.
It simply wasn’t practical for the Secret Service to confiscate everyone’s
personal devices of various kinds as they came in the White House door, because
the staff used them all day for personal and political business. As a precaution
against unauthorized data theft, on entering the White House the Protective Service
door guards passed each wireless phone, videophone, personal notebook, and
Blackberry through a device which gave them an electronic configuration and
snapshot of the drive and/or chips inside, together with their data content, X drive
holding 300 gigabytes, Y chip holding 52.4 gigabytes, etc. These specifics were
recorded on the security computer database. When each staffer left at night, their
devices and laptops were again passed through the scanner and matched against
their entrance data for that morning. Any extra data, or missing data causing a
discrepancy, had to have a matching supervisor’s download permission code
recorded for that device during the day giving the time when the download was
performed and the source of the download.
The system was incredibly cumbersome and almost useless, because so few
people bothered with it during the day. Half of them forgot what they had
downloaded or added to their personal computers and handheld devices by the time
they got to security checkout. The result was a line of irritated and arrogant
government prima donnas at every security exit at quitting time, all of them
convinced they were far too important and powerful players to have to bother with
such nonsense, and many of them abusing and insulting the long-suffering FPS
officers who wanted to know why they had two more gigabytes of data on their
day planner than they’d had at nine o’clock that morning. The line to leave ended
up slowed to a crawl as employees tried to locate authorized supervisors on the
phone and get them to OK an upload to a guard, staffers made a game of finding
ways to sneak out of the White House without checking out through security,
formal complaints and reprimands and apologies and memos flew like confetti, and
the whole thing degenerated into a typical American clusterfuck. This gave a
genuine spy like Georgia a good deal of wiggle room.
What Birdie came up with was a way to rig Georgia’s SuperPod, her
personal music player, so that she could load up to five terabytes of data onto the
drive and conceal the fact. At some expense, the Office purchased for Georgia the
deluxe Ayatollah Rockandrolla model, a pre-programmed SuperPod which
contained literally every rock-and-roll, rockabilly, soul, Motown, heavy metal,
grunge, ska, and any other popular music recorded in the last century, starting with
Buddy Holly and the first Elvis. Everything except racist Skinhead rock music, Oi
music, White Noise, and Northwest rebel songs like Third Brigade and The Boys of
Centralia, of course.
The tens of thousands of songs amounted to quite a bit of compressed data,
but this drive was partitioned by Birdie on two levels in some manner that Bobby
could not understand, and Georgia didn’t even try. There were hundreds of songs
on the upper drive, and Georgia could create her own playlists and listen for hours,
as could anyone else if they wanted proof that the SuperPod did indeed contain
music. The lower partition was programmed in some voodoo-like manner so that
when Georgia connected the Pod to a source computer or inserted a chip or flash
drive, the new data uploaded onto the lower partition of the device’s drive and
overwrote the existing data there without adding or increasing the overall content.
Georgia’s SuperPod went through the Secret Service scanner in the afternoon when
she reported for Seventh Inning Stretch and showed 5.2 terabytes of data, and out
again the next morning showing 5.2 terabytes—just not all of it the same data.
It was risky. At the slightest hint of suspicion, the SuperPod drive could be
seized and accessed with a password-cracking program, and the true contents
displayed. There was an emergency code Georgia could text onto the pad that
would wipe the drive so clean that Christ and all twelve apostles couldn’t recover a
single byte, but to do that was in itself as good as a confession if she were caught.
But now not only did she have a way to bring actual confidential data out of the
White House, but she had something to take out.
At the conclusion of seventh inning stretch in the executive lounge,
President Wallace always ducked quickly into the shower to spruce up before
resuming his official duties. Georgia needed a more leisurely time in the bathroom
to clean up, shower, and sometimes to apply any necessary ointment or bandages
to her body. This evening she had used the president’s shower time to rifle through
his pockets, and she had found a flash drive with the clear plastic handle labeled
“SR Conference May 20.” That was today’s date, and SR had to be Situation
Room. Taking advantage of the absence of spy cameras in the Oval Office love
nest, Georgia whipped out her SuperPod and copied the contents of the flash drive
onto it, then carefully replaced the drive in Wallace’s inner jacket pocket where
she found it just as he stepped out of the shower.
She was curious as to what she’d gotten. Now alone in the only other
surveillance-free place in the building, she opened the file and picked a point at
random to start playing. She saw Hunter Wallace’s face and heard his voice: “We
will flatten everything west of the Cascades from Eugene to Bellingham; Seattle
and Portland and Olympia will be nothing but burning trash heaps in a junkyard,
and our ground-based planes and missiles will blast Boise and Spokane and
Missoula into powder until not one stone remains on the other, and racism will be
but a bad memory in the world…”
Georgia texted an apparently innocuous message to a girlfriend at her old
job which was in fact relayed to Bob Campbell’s phone, and told him she needed a
meeting next morning at a certain bar and grill downtown, where the security
cameras had been carefully turned aside so that one side entrance and a couple of
tables at the back were in a blind spot. Georgia thought of her father and her
brother in Montana, and the little baby boy she had seen when Bobby played their
messages, and of what she was doing every night with the man who meant to
murder them. She cried for a while, and then she got herself cleaned up. Her lover
had told her he’d be up to bed early tonight.
Twenty-four hours later, the Northwest American Republic’s Council of
State sat in the conference room in Olympia and watched the whole previous day’s
meeting of their opposite numbers in the White House situation room. They heard
Hunter Wallace say: “We will flatten everything west of the Cascades from
Eugene to Bellingham; Seattle and Portland and Olympia will be nothing but
burning trash heaps in a junkyard, and our ground-based planes and missiles will
blast Boise and Spokane and Missoula into powder until not one stone remains on
the other, and racism will be but a bad memory in the world.”
Wallace did not hear his counterpart, State President Henry “Red”
Morehouse as he spoke aloud, to no one in particular, “No, sir. You won’t.”
XII. Plan 17
(12 years and seven months after Longview)
All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of
which victory is evolved. - Sun Tzu
State President Henry “Red” Morehouse arrived at Fort Lewis with his
entourage on a morning in late May, ostensibly for a routine inspection tour during
the day and a formal reception in the officer’s mess that night. As part of that
inspection, the president disappeared indoors at the base commander’s office for
several hours under the watchful eye of the American surveillance satellites
hundreds of miles out, during which time he was taken through an underground
tunnel to a building a quarter of a mile away that was officially the base laundry,
and which emitted sufficient quantities of steam every day to prove it for the
benefit of the enemy watching from above.
In a sub-basement beneath the laundry, Morehouse was shown to the
General Staff’s new command center, which had been established to meet the
present emergency. “When the actual invasion comes, Red, this will be too
dangerous a target, and we’ll have to keep you on the move,” Defense Minister
Carter Wingfield told the president. “After H-Hour, tactical command will be
delegated down to the individual units. You and Vice President Brennan will be in
separate mobile communications centers, moving around the Republic as dictated
by events, to keep you one step ahead of any air strikes, and hopefully confuse any
satellite surveillance they have left after Rotfungus. But most individual decisions
will have to be made by field grade officers on the ground.”
“There had better not be either any air strikes or any satellite surveillance for
us to worry about,” Morehouse told him grimly. “Both Bluelight and Rotfungus
have to work! We can’t fight against our own sky.”
In the command center President Morehouse met with the Special Planning
Group, as the floating mini-War Cabinet and team of attached staff had been
named, to receive one of his regular briefings on the constantly evolving details of
Plan 17. Ever since the first year of the Northwest Republic’s existence, at least
once a year the General Staff of the Northwest Defense Force had reviewed and
put together an updated plan for dealing with just this contingency, a full-blown
American attack against the nation in an attempt to re-enslave it. The first plan had
been called Plan One, and this was the seventeenth update in twelve years, hence
Plan 17. In the NDF’s center, there were none of the fancy blinking lights, plasma
screens, and electronic gadgetry that could be found in the White House Situation
Room. There was just a simple room with a table and chairs, large maps on the
wall, a single satellite-linked TV for monitoring CNN, a small bank of radio and
computer gear, and some dedicated phone lines.
General John Morgan chaired the briefing. “We are now certain we have a
pretty full picture of what they’re planning,” he told Morehouse. “Our information
comes from human intelligence sources, of course, including that incredible
Belladonna project, but also from dozens of other agents positioned in various
places in the enemy’s infrastructure. Charlie Randall hasn’t been sitting on his
hands for the past twelve years, I can tell you. In addition to our spies, we have
info from hacked enemy satellites and computers as well.”
“First and biggest question,” said Morehouse. “Frank, do they know that we
know for sure they’re coming? If they do, if they understand that they’ve lost the
element of surprise and there won’t be any Northwest Pearl Harbor, that might
cause them to move up D-Day or change their plan.”
“As nearly as we can ascertain, no sir, they don’t know for sure that we
know,” said Frank Barrow, Minister of Security, through whom all the intelligence
efforts of the Special Planning Group were being coordinated. “Oh, they know
we’re skittish, and we’ve spotted some disinformation and concealment attempts
on their part. They’re assuming that we have enough sense to sniff something in
the wind, but they’re hoping that we won’t guess the magnitude of it. As always,
they’re underestimating our intelligence in every sense of the word. Amazing as it
seems, the government of Amurrica still seems to have the same kind of hubris that
lost them the War of Independence in the first place. Jews simply can’t wrap their
minds around the fact that they are not smarter than everybody else. They have
learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
“Go on,” said Morehouse.
John Morgan picked it up. “We now can break down the enemy order of
battle as follows: Operation Strikeout begins with the massive war game called
Operation Blast Furnace, in eastern Montana and the Dakotas, and that’s getting
underway this weekend as the 82nd and 101st Airborne do a lot of spectacular show
jumps over Fargo and Billings, a few military parades in small prairie towns with
bands and nice shiny tanks, all very out in the open, oh-no-we’re-not-hidinganything, you get the idea. It is the most massive exercise ever conducted by the
American military, comprising almost sixty percent of the entire United States
armed forces, and it involves all of the land and air forces that will comprise the
invasion. Even their field grade officers, major generals and below, have been kept
in ignorance of the fact that this is not a drill, and I suspect that may backfire on
the Pentagon. Generals don’t like being treated like children to be sent out of the
room when the adults are talking. They’ll feel resentful, and it’s bound to show in
their response.
“This kind of monkeyshine has been something they do every couple of
years as a form of rattling their saber. Basically, they get almost all their combat
troops as close as they can to our frontier and cut a swagger, play a little grab-ass,
pop a few shells over the border, kind of like a gorilla beating its chest. They do
this either to the east of us, like this time, or else down in Colorado on the
Wyoming border. They’ve done it four times prior to this, causing us to call up at
least some of the first-line reserves as a precaution. Then they use their satellites to
study our reaction, to see how we’ve positioned our men and equipment to repel an
attack if it turns into the real thing. By now, they figure we’re getting a little blasé
about it, and they think they can catch us off guard. They’re counting on their
attacking across the Canadian border to surprise us, since Canada’s always been
quiet. Lots of nasty rhetoric from Ottawa, but never any military provocation.
Vancouver is too close and we could do too much damage to the mansions of the
wealthy Chinese ex-pats who are some of the main supporters of Simoneau and his
Liberal party government.”
“So in other words, the Americans actually expect us to mobilize our
reserves, and they will be allowing us time to do so?” asked Morehouse. “That’s
their first mistake right there.”
“They really have no choice, Mister President,” spoke up Colonel Garrison
from Combined Military Intelligence. “They know that any complete element of
surprise can’t be achieved, and the closer they get to D-Day, the more likely we’ll
be able to twig to what’s up. They want to razzle-dazzle us with smoke and
mirrors, and they think they can pull it off. In practical fact, in this technological
age it is simply impossible to conceal that kind of major troop movement on either
side in a built-up and surveilled area like North America, without somebody in
someone’s intelligence analysis unit spotting it from space. They’re not total idiots,
and despite the hubris that their political leadership displays, they have sense
enough to get that we’re not completely stupid either. They have known for years
that we hack into their spy satellites and use their own gear to spy on them.
They’re relying on misdirection, rather than deception.”
“Oh, they know we watch them through their own eyes in the sky, all right,”
said Frank Barrow. “There has been a quiet little cyber-war going on for a long
time, where we try to wipe out one another’s ground computers with viruses.”
“Not the on-board computers?” asked Morehouse keenly. “Frank, can we get
any kind of take on whether or not they know about Rotfungus?”
“I don’t think so, Red,” said Barrow. “Nothing in the chatter we can pick up
indicates they’re worried about a super-virus, although one can never really know
what the other guy really thinks. There’s always the chance that we’ve been
bluffed and stroked, or we think we’ve bluffed and stroked them when we haven’t.
That’s the nature of the spying game. Our intel indicates that the Americans have
considered the possibility of something like Rotfungus, sure. Obviously, any time
there are computers involved you have to worry about viruses. They periodically
update the firewalls and the AV and security software for the onboard drives in
space, but they’re not really concerned with that, because they believe what we
want to do is actually hijack the spy satellite system by reprogramming the onboard software and then use it ourselves, while denying them access to it. We did
that a few times with the Lazarus Birds, so that makes sense to them. I wish to hell
we could figure out more ways to do that, but they’ve already cracked the
programs we used and secured their satellites against them. Apparently, they
consider any attempt on our part simply to destroy the whole orbiting
communications network up there and blind everybody on earth except our
Russian friends to be a long shot. Just because they wouldn’t wipe out billions of
dollars’ worth of expensive equipment, much of it the private property of big
multinational corporations, they think we won’t either. Rotfungus specifically
seems to be a secret still; none of the AV programs they’re uploading so far
appears designed for it. I once spent an hour with Doctor Joseph Cord wherein he
explained to me in great detail why Rotfungus is so special, something about it not
attacking the programming on the on-board drives themselves, which will be
heavily firewalled and guarded, but the BIOS on all the operating devices and
peripherals on the satellite. I couldn’t understand a word he said.”
“Join the club, but Doctor Frankencord has never failed us yet. I think we
can take it from him that Rotfungus will work,” said Morehouse. “It had better
work; otherwise this will be a really short war.”
Morgan took up the thread again. “Getting back to the assembly of the
invasion force on our eastern border, around the middle of June, presumably under
the illusion that they are still fooling us, the Americans will divide into two groups.
The Americans’ Group North will attack through Canada with something on the
order of one hundred and seventy-five thousand men, including three army corps,
three full Marine divisions, six armored brigades, and three airborne brigades they
intend to use as spearheads and drop into the Republic first, in order to seize key
points in Montana and Idaho. The ground invasion force will slash down into
Idaho and take Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, and keep on heading south.
“The remaining enemy forces will in turn divide and attack us through
eastern Montana in two columns, Group Center coming more or less down old
U.S. Eighty-Seven, and Group South will come down old Interstate Ninety – two
hundred thousand men, divided into five army corps and including seven armored
brigades and two field artillery brigades. It will be what they call a Baghdad
Boogie, based on the original dash to Baghdad in ‘Ought Three from Kuwait. Both
columns will be completely mechanized, and the Pentagon has allocated twentyfour hours before they will be entering Butte, Helena, and Great Falls, then another
twenty-four hours to take Missoula and Kalispell. They will turn southwest and
link up with Army Group North in Boise, and then start sending columns westward
to places like Bend and other places east of the Cascades. Immediately following
the front line troops will come the first elements of their Northwest Stability Force,
which is what they call that FATPO-like army of occupation they’ve been training
at Fort Bragg, in order to hold down what the actual military takes. That is when
the bad part will start for our civilian population on the ground.”
“Mechanization is their key weakness,” said Carter Wingfield. “The
Luftwaffe and our best Partisan Ranger units have to take out their vehicles and
fuel supplies first, put the bastards on shank’s mare. Then once we’ve slowed them
to a crawl we begin the counterattack with our main ground forces. This is
assuming our own vehicles and forces aren’t plastered all over the landscape or
pinned down due to the enemy’s control of the air.”
Morgan continued grimly: “In the meantime, Aztlan’s Fuerza del Ejército
del Norte will attack from California and Nevada on a broad front, but mostly up
the I-Five corridor, four hundred thousand men in eighteen divisions, three of them
Assault Guards who have been trained by the Chinese and North Koreans. Most of
the Aztec army is just mestizo peons, not very well trained and armed with
whatever they’ve been able to beg or borrow from other countries’ military
surplus, but those Asaltos are bad news. They’ve not only got better training and
equipment than the mestizo conscripts, but they’re more ideologically and racially
motivated. Complete the Reconquista, death to the gringos, Viva La Raza, you get
the idea, The Aztecs have over one thousand combat helicopters with Chinese
crews, which will be valuable in the kind of mountainous terrain they’re going to
have to cover at first before they can get down onto the coastal plain or up into the
high desert. They also have at least seven hundred tanks in various stages of
obsolescence. Counting U.S. Air Force and naval personnel from the seaborne task
force, the combined Mexican and American force which will be invading the
Northwest Republic approaches one million men.”
“Even I can see there’s something wompy-jawed here just by looking at the
map,” said Morehouse, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “They’re not directing
anything against Wyoming, which will be sitting there on their southern flank?”
“Not really, sir,” said Garrison. “Air strikes at military installations in
Cheyenne, Casper, Sheridan, and Cody, but that’s about it. It’s like they’ve almost
forgotten it exists, which I admit is easy to do. Hell, sometimes we forget
Wyoming exists.”
“What is our fully mobilized reserve military strength in Wyoming, all
arms?” asked the State President.
“With the Civil Guard, almost two hundred thousand men, including four
armored and four field artillery regiments. By way of regulars we’ve got the
Preobrazhensky Regiment and the Don Cossacks at Sheridan, and the First
Mountain Brigade at Yellowstone, and about a hundred V-3s at Laramie and
Cheyenne we can use to hit Colorado Springs and Denver, but we were going to
move those up to North Bend so we could drop ‘em on Vancouver if need be.”
“Continue with the relocation. No point in pissing off the folks in Colorado
when their sector is quiet, and besides, they’re still mostly white down there. John,
did you work up those figures I asked you to last time?”
“Yes, sir,” said Morgan. “On your order, as soon before D-Day as you think
we can do it without tipping them off, we can have at least another thirty thousand
regulars down there, including a lot of our tanks, the Panzer Grenadiers and the
Ninth and Twelfth Panzer Regiments.”
Morehouse nodded. “Good. Send warning orders to the regimental
commands to get ready. We’ll start sending them in now, a battalion at a time, at
night, covered freight cars. Make sure you replace the missing tanks with blow-ups
at their home bases, again by night, so the satellites don’t pick up on it, or at least
they’ll be confused as hell. Are we moving the real tanks into Wyoming, or are
those the inflatables? Keep everything as much under cover as possible. Then
when that American Group South moves into Montana, we slice in behind them,
cut them off, and hit them from the rear.”
“Brava and Scheisskopf can’t see this coming?” wondered SS General Billy
Jackson. “Don’t they teach map reading at West Point and Annapolis any more?”
“They think their almighty air power will prevent any major troop
deployment on our part. Admiral Leach, you want to fill us in on the enemy
seaborne attack?”
“Bloody Dave” Leach spoke up. “At H-Hour, from the west, the Republic
will simultaneously be hit from the air by what they call Naval Task Force Soaring
Eagle, probably from a distance of around a hundred miles offshore, which gives
them plenty of water to see our own navy coming, such as it is. This will be within
range of our Vakhonts shore batteries, so those will presumably be the first targets
they aim for, possibly the very first shots fired at the Republic. To be blunt, even if
we can get off all our Russian missiles from the shore, most of them may not make
it, because the U.S. Navy’s defense systems are designed to take out just that kind
of high-tech attack. We’ll have to see how it plays out.
“Soaring Eagle consists of five carriers, two missile subs, eight frigates, and
twenty-one destroyers. They will be convoyed together and a direct attack on them,
which is our only option once we’ve fired the Vakhonts, will result in massive
naval casualties on our side no matter what the outcome. They are also armed with
HELs, high-energy laser weapons, designed specifically to combat small attacking
surface craft, so they know what to expect. We haven’t been able to come up with
any plan other than a flat-out full attack with everything we’ve got, concentrating
on the carriers. We have to stop those bombers, and we can’t rely on Bluelight to
do it. We just don’t have enough of the projectors and trained crews to fire them,
and those we do have need to be concentrated in the east where the bulk of the
American air power and above all their paratrooper drops will be coming at us. We
have to take out those goddamned carriers and missile subs on the sea.”
“The Luftwaffe will be placing our entire force of jets at the western defense
command’s disposal for the purpose of dealing with the attack from the sea,” spoke
up Air Marshal Billy Basquine. “That’s not much, about sixty aircraft, almost all of
which are converted private business jets, pre-Longview. We simply haven’t been
able to afford to compete in an arms race with the major capitalist powers and their
huge budgets, not without crushing our own people with taxation of the kind our
Constitution forbids. Our best planes are the Aerions, converted into the missile
assault fighters we call Skyhawks. We have sixteen of them. They can cruise at
Mach 1.6, and our engineers have souped them up and reinforced them to where
they can do a Mach 2 missile run, maybe a little faster. They’re armed with Exocet
Fives, which we have renamed Mjolnirs. The problem is that any attack on that
fleet is going to run into a concentrated mass of firepower from computercontrolled chain guns, surface-to-air missiles, and laser weapons, not to mention F22s and F-30s from the carriers themselves that will be able to swat down anything
we’ve got like flies. It’s an integrated air defense system to which Mach 2 is as
slow as molasses in wintertime. The enemy’s anti-aircraft defenses are designed to
deal with high-speed jet attackers in just this kind of situation.
“The Skyhawks carry two Mjolnir missiles whose warheads detonate at over
eight thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and can melt through a steel hull like butter in a
microwave. No question at all they can sink a carrier if our guys can just get one or
two lucky, well-placed hits. We have handpicked and briefed the two-man
Skyhawk crews, and explained what they’re going to have to do. They are all
young men, mostly unmarried, mostly National Socialist. They know most of them
won’t be returning to base, and they’re up for it. The plan is to concentrate the
Skyhawks on one carrier, most likely one of the two big ones, the Kitty Hawk or
the JFK II, and then they all make their missile runs at once from three different
angles and try to overwhelm the ship’s defenses in one mass attack. I think we can
guarantee that at least one carrier will go down that way, Mr. President. Beyond
that, it’s in the lap of the gods. Our other jets will attack at the same time, of
course, but they’re converted Lears and Airbuses, and frankly they probably won’t
be able to accomplish much except to run interference and draw fire away from the
Skyhawks. Okay, let’s look on the bright side, maybe they can sink a couple of
frigates. But we’re going to lose most of them, may Hunter Wallace burn in hell.”
“We decided against an attempt to use our propeller-driven planes?” asked
Morehouse.
Basquine shook his head. “This isn’t Midway in 1942, sir. Our pilots are all
willing and fully committed to defending the Republic, giving up their lives if they
have to, but I simply can’t order that kind of pointless suicide attack. We will need
the Songbirds and Starfighters and all our combat choppers on the eastern and
southern fronts dealing with the ground invasion.”
“Who expect to meet no resistance at all, apparently,” said Morehouse.
Barrow said, “Oh, they figure we’ll resist, but since our forces are almost
completely infantry, they think they will simply brush us aside and then we’ll run
off into the woods and take up the guerrilla insurgency again where we left off,
like we’ve always threatened. Like the Iraqis did in ‘Ought Three. Apparently, the
Pentagon is good with that. Hunter Wallace is looking for a quick morale victory
so he can get that third-term resolution through Congress and get his weak little ass
re-elected as the Fearless Leader who re-unified Amurrica.”
“Their strategy is to seize control of the Republic’s population and
infrastructure centers, if the bombing leaves us any,” said Wingfield. “They know
that we simply do not have the kind of high technology and heavy armored
weaponry that they have. Our individual soldiers usually don’t even wear personal
body armor except in a few special units. We can’t afford it. They actually aren’t
worried about conquering the Republic. It’s always been one of their givens that
they could do that any time they want. It’s something everybody has always
assumed, including us during the first few years of our existence. The reason they
haven’t done so up until now is that we’ve successfully used their fear of the one
thing that America cannot sustain and which always defeats them—a long-term,
low-level and low-tech guerrilla campaign in hostile country by a people who
don’t want to be occupied by nigger and beaner soldiers. They’re more concerned
with getting Operation Chain Link’s army of occupation properly trained at Fort
Bragg and getting them up here and lording it over us so as to look good and have
Amy Lieberman reporting live from Seattle again on CNN, that kind of crap.
Apparently, Wallace has now decided that a long and low-level guerrilla war is
preferable to the humiliation of a white nation in North America that consistently
shows up the mighty United States in every sphere of human endeavor. In a way he
may be right; now that America no longer has the immense overseas military
commitment it had during the War of Independence, maintaining the Northwest in
a state of subjection is a lot more financially feasible.”
“Any idea at all on H-Hour?” asked Morehouse.
“Brava wants 0600 hours on June 21st, and his people are using that as their
presumed H-Hour, but Wallace still won’t give the final okay,” said Frank Barrow.
“So what can we throw against these bastards?” asked Morehouse.
“Almost five million men and women under arms, including our regulars,
who are the best trained and most highly motivated individual soldiers in the
world. Enough to kick their asses, if we can accomplish three things in the first
couple of days,” said Morgan. “First, we have to blind the sons of bitches. We have
to take out their eyes in the sky with Rotfungus. Then we have to take out their air
power with Bluelight. Finally, we have to take out the bulk of the motorized
transport in all four invading columns with Songbirds, Starfighters, 75s and 88s,
any way we can, and make the bastards slog in here on foot. Take away their toys
and the shields they hide behind. Make them get down and dirty, man-to-man and
hand to hand with armed and angry white men. Especially the Mexicans coming
from the south, get them all tangled and strung out along those mountain roads and
along the Pacific Coast Highway, where we can set an ambush around every bend
and in every valley.”
“What we have to bear in mind is that this force they’re sending against us
comprises virtually the entire effective combat strength of the United States
military,” said Wingfield. “We will oppose them with approximately four hundred
thousand regular soldiers of the NDF, including twelve SS regiments in three
divisions, who in my opinion are literally equivalent to ten times their number of
any Americans you care to name, and who will be kept back as a mobile reserve
and thrown in wherever it gets the hottest. Add to that around fifty thousand
Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel, forty thousand Civil Guards, and a little
over four and a half million reservists of all types, including ancillary formations
such as the Young Pioneers and the Category B Special Reserve of men from age
50 on up. It will be their small core of heavily armed and technologically supported
professionals versus an entire white nation in arms. The microchip against the
human spirit. A battle that has been a long time coming.”
“World War Three versus World War One, as someone once put it,” said
Barrow sourly. “We outnumber them like hell, and they’re counting on their hightech gadgetry to slaughter us like jack rabbits.”
“You got it,” said Wingfield. “These people are throwing professional
mercenaries against an entire nation, and if it’s any consolation, it would appear
that they are shooting their whole wad on this attack. If we can defeat and disable
the American forces invading us, they have virtually no combat reserves to back
them up or to resist Plan 17’s planned counterattacks into California and Canada.
There are well over a million people in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps alone, but
only a few of them have anything to do with actual fighting. The American
military had always been top-heavy with support personnel—it still requires
something like seventy people behind the lines in various capacities to keep one
combat soldier in the field. Our ratio of support to combat personnel has always
been kept as close to one-to-one as we can make it. We’ll have the bastards
outnumbered, and we’ll be on interior lines.”
“They will have massive heavy equipment and high technology to beat us
with,” said Morgan. “We have a few techie tricks up our sleeve that might or might
not work, but our boys will damned sure have some damned good rifles and light
artillery, and the ability to hit what they aim at. This will get interesting.”
***
United States Army Lieutenant General Albert Scheisskopf, the buzz-cut
Chief of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought so too, only interesting
wasn’t the word he used. “This is going to be a cluster-fuck,” he bluntly told
Admiral Hector Brava, in a closed-door meeting of the top brass in Brava’s
Pentagon office. They didn’t dare use a formal conference room for fear of
attracting notice, and Brava had taken the precaution of using a discreet private
security firm to sweep his office and his home for surreptitious listening and video
devices. They had found two sets, one from the Department of Homeland security
and one of unknown provenance but most likely from the Anti-Defamation League
of B’nai B’rith, which was now the operational arm of the former Israeli Mossad.
“We are underestimating the enemy and we are approaching this whole operation
in a sloppy and unprofessional manner,” Scheisskopf went on. “I have repeatedly
pointed out that we will be outnumbered almost five to one, and the Doughboy
babbles on about how we were outnumbered in Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan as
well, so forth and so on.”
“Wars we eventually lost,” pointed out Brava sourly.
“You try to tell the Doughboy that,” said Air Force Lieutenant General
Norwood Bellows. “I can understand him not knowing any history. Most
Americans don’t. But Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran aren’t Valley Forge, they
happened when he was a Congressman, for fuck’s sake! We know they have some
kind of special anti-aircraft weapon they’re planning on using against our pilots,
but nobody can get any take on what the hell it is, unless you believe that
ridiculous Knight woman’s babble about alien ray guns. We presume this Bluelight
thing is something similar to our own High Energy Laser weapons, in which case
we could be in for some trouble, but we haven’t been able to mount any effective
intelligence effort inside the Republic for—wait, can I say Republic in here
without getting court-martialed?” he interposed bitterly.
“I think you’re safe,” said Brava. “I think you’re safe. I think my guys got all
the bugs out of here and nobody has come nosing around trying to plant more yet.”
“The point is, why in God’s name are we attacking anybody with this kind of
lack of reliable intel?” whined Bellows. “For Christ’s sake, we didn’t go into
pissant countries like Grenada or Panama this blind!”
“The president thinks the satellite surveillance is all we need,” Brava told
them. “Sure, it’s impressive. We can watch what goes on anywhere in the NAR
like we were looking over our back fence—when it’s daytime, and when there’s no
cloud cover, and when we know where to look to see something interesting, and
when we have halfway intelligent analysts to figure out what we’re looking at. And
when the Nazis aren’t misdirecting us with inflatable tanks and weird machines
that turn out to be International Harvesters with fake weapons glued onto them.”
“They’re not all Nazis,” said Selkirk.
“I know that, and you know that, but our political bosses don’t seem to know
or care,” said Brava. “We don’t even really know the people we’re going to be
fighting, and that’s incredibly dumb, believing one’s own propaganda. We know
that some of the tanks and aircraft we see are blown-up inflatable dummies. We
know that some of the troop movements we see are the same guys marching in and
out and here and there just to confuse us—hell, those tricks are as old as Quaker
guns and Jeb Magruder marching his men around the mountain. The president
doesn’t understand that we need actual human intelligence on the ground so that
we know what the hell we’re looking at and why. The CIA is useless, it’s run by
a—well, we all know who it’s run by. Our external military intelligence arms are
limited by Congress and by rules and regulations as to what we can or can’t do, by
jurisdictional squabbles and budget and every other goddamned thing, plus it’s just
plain hard to get actual physical spies on the ground in the Republic with any kind
of serious training or skills and get them positioned to be of any use. Either the
goddamned BOSS catches them and they disappear, or else they disappear on their
own. You know we found one of our naval intelligence agents who had been
missing for five years? He simply walked into BOSS one day and turned himself
in; they wrung him dry of information and let him go. He’s living in Tillamook,
Oregon, now, working on a fishing boat, he’s married and has a couple of kids. By
definition anyone we use has to be white, and white men seem to be subject to—
well, temptation.”
“I can’t believe that Herrin woman actually used the word ‘cakewalk’ the
other day,” said Marine Corps Commandant Louis Battaglia. “These are the same
men who defeated and killed Delmar Partman and eight thousand United States
Marines, only now they have a properly trained professional military of over five
million. What fucking planet are those people in the White House living on?”
“I find it difficult to believe that the Northmen are going to shoot down all
our aircraft with alien death rays, never mind Kanesha Knight’s demented
ramblings,” said Scheisskopf. “If this Bluelight thing is some kind of HEL they
have been able to convert to anti-aircraft use, although we could never do it, then
yes, we may lose some planes and missiles, but they won’t be able to take down
enough to affect the actual turn of events. The first forty-eight hours of shock and
awe from the air will make it impossible for them to resist the occupation of the
Northwest. We occupy the main population centers and bring in the Stability Force
to gradually return American authority, American courts, and the rule of law to the
rural areas, and then finally get them back on the dollar and paying twelve years’
worth of back taxes, which will go a long way to solving the country’s financial
problems. But that’s the simple part. We could have done that three months after
that disgraceful Longview sellout, and we should have. But as things are, we’re
going to be dealing with millions of people who have gotten used to going walkies
whenever and wherever the hell they want without the leash, and they have to be
re-conditioned in their minds to civilized thought and behavior. There will be
resistance for years, and it will probably be a generation before it’s really safe for
an African-American or a Hispanic-American or a gay or lesbian American to live
in Seattle or Spokane again.”
“I’m not convinced that all five million of those armed racists are going to
simply throw down their weapons and cower in holes while the bombs fall,” said
Battaglia. “These aren’t Iraqis or Muslim peasants in Bumfuckistan who have
never seen a flush toilet. These are Americans, goddammit! Most of them,
anyway.”
“Run down what we know of their probable defense strategy again, Al?”
asked Brava.
“They don’t use divisions like we do, except in the Special Service, the SS,
which is their élite spearhead force,” Scheisskopf told them. “The basic fighting
unit of the NDF ground forces is the regiment, consisting of three regular
battalions that numbering around 700 men each. In time of war, as many as ten
extra battalions of reservists will bring an infantry regiment to full combat strength,
which can be as high as nine thousand men. Each battalion in turn has six
companies: four infantry companies, one support company of quartermasters and
medics and technicians, and one heavy weapons company. The heavy weapons
company usually consists of light artillery in the form of 75-millimeter or 88millimeter anti-tank and anti-personnel guns, vehicle-mounted recoilless rifles and
twin .50-calibers, and a few armored assault vehicles, so every battalion packs a
heavier punch than just small arms. In addition to which, batteries off an actual
artillery battalion can be attached to line battalions in the field, as can any other
damned thing like these death rays, if they exist. Those 88-mil self-propelled guns
are going to give us problems, especially our armor. They’re based on the German
World War Two version, but everything about them has been updated and
modernized. They have an accurate range of over eight miles, in a war that will be
fought over a lot of open country, and their SuperSemtex shells can disable even
our heaviest tanks.
“An NDF infantry battalion is organized, trained, and used tactically as a
self-contained and self-sustaining unit.” Scheisskopf continued. “In essence, when
we go across that border we aren’t going to be facing two or three enemy armies,
we will be facing hundreds of small armies of between seven hundred and a
thousand men each, all capable of acting independently, striking independently or
else coordinating with other units, striking, and then dispersing. We will have the
same problem on land that the Navy will have with Task Force Soaring Eagle and
all those little torpedo boats and whatnot the Northmen have invested in. We’ll be
the biggest and meanest motherfuckers in the valley of death, but we’ll be facing
not a handful sharks, but a school of piranhas. The terrain will favor them—lots of
room for maneuver on the plains and lots of ravines and forests and valleys for
ambushes in the mountain country. Not to mention the fact that the Northmen have
spent over a decade training those very units we’ll be going up against all over that
very terrain, so they’ll have home ground advantage. We will win, Hector. Our
satellites will tell us every move they make and our air power will ensure that they
have nothing left to fight with or for. I don’t believe in alien death rays, and there’s
no way they can shoot down B-52s at thirty-thousand feet with souped-up civvie
prop jobs. But it’s not going to be a cakewalk. It’s going to be a long and drawnout bloody mess, we are going to lose a lot of people, and it will go on until the
Stability Force can get most of the racists dead and corral the rest, ship them out
and disperse them. Then we can bring in loyal and diverse American communities
to re-settle the Northwest.”
“You know that the unofficial word is that there won’t be many civvies left
to ship out?” asked Brava.
Scheisskopf shrugged. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
You rebel against the United States of America, the greatest country in the world,
then you pay the price. I just don’t like the price we’re going to be paying because
our commander-in-chief, uh…well, you know.”
“We know,” said Brava with a sigh.
***
When he wasn’t handling Georgia for Operation Belladonna, Richie from
Chicago spent the month of May doing his day job as a buttlegger and beeflegger
in the District of Columbia Green Zone. Even in this comparatively safe and
prosperous environment, what he saw made him sick, and confirmed that
everything he remembered from the old American days in Montana and everything
he had learned in school about the revolution and the reasons for it was true.
He hand-delivered cartons of cigarettes and boxes of cigars to the homes and
offices of Congressmen and Senators and major government functionaries who
gave stirring speeches to the media and on the legislative floor about the evils of
tobacco and the nobility of a cruelty-free vegetarian diet, who then snuck out onto
their private balconies for a steak or fried chicken dinner discreetly prepared in one
of the many covert private kitchens that had been set up throughout every
government office building, topped off with a cigarette or a luxurious Cohiba or
Macanudo. Bob had no objection to tobacco, although he chose not to smoke
himself because of the real health risks, and he considered the ban on meat to be
simply one more bit of madness in a society that had clearly gone insane. But the
level of sheer hypocrisy in America stunned him; more than once he had made
deliveries right at the Department of Health, which was responsible for enforcing
the bans, and he had walked down corridors to the sound and smell of sizzling
bacon from one of the break room kitchens, to hand over cartons of smokes to
officials who had the power to arrest him on the spot for breaking the same law
they were breaking themselves. It was bizarre.
He quickly learned not to watch American television. It seemed to consist of
nothing but gibbering, bubble-lipped black faces shouting obscenities, and naked
people of all races and genders committing indiscriminate acts of perversion with
each other, with animals, and with assorted inanimate objects. That and Spanish
soap operas. Occasionally he watched one of the so-called news broadcasts, which
consisted of slavish adulatory puff pieces about President Hunter Wallace and
certain selected political celebrities of the One Nation Indivisible persuasion, as
well as alleged news stories that Bob knew full well to be either false, misleading,
or pure fantasy. “News stopped being news here a long time ago,” Cardinale
explained to him. “It’s just another form of entertainment.”
Bob did occasionally watch what purported to be news stories and
documentaries about the Northwest Republic. He was tempted simply to laugh, but
it really wasn’t funny, because he came to understand that most people actually
believed this drivel, or if they didn’t, then they didn’t dare to say so. Apparently,
people in the Northwest were all either A) starving and on the brink of revolting
against the Party because of the economic sanctions, or B) dying of heart attacks
and hardened arteries from gorging on Montana beef, Washington chicken, and
Oregon dairy products. He learned to his amazement that the Republic had
forbidden anyone to use white plastic garbage bags because it “showed disrespect
for the white master race,” and they were required to use black. (In real life, no one
in the Republic used plastic garbage bags at all, of any color, because they were
wasteful, and there were better uses for the country’s polyethylene manufacturing
capabilities. Organic waste was collected for fertilizer in the notorious “honey
wagons” of Northwest song and humor, while beverage containers were of glass,
steel, and aluminum and were recycled.)
Bob learned from American TV that the Bureau of State Security was the
great bugaboo in the Northwest, an all-powerful and all-seeing secret police who
were “licensed to kill,” who tyrannized folks and arrested them for listening to a
song by a black “artist” on their computer, so forth and so on. Bob knew damned
well that was a lie, because he was a Guard himself back home, and as a member
of the CID detective force, he had occasionally worked with BOSS.
There were around a hundred BOSS agents throughout the entire Northwest
Republic. The BOSS office in Missoula consisted of a man in older middle age,
Major Leonard Painting, and four agents who covered the eastern part of the NAR
in Montana and occasionally lent a hand down in Wyoming when necessary.
Painting seemed more interested in fly-fishing and building carpentry items in his
garage workshop; he had made an actual cradle for Bob Three, which Ida had
inherited when she came along. He almost never wore the plain black BOSS
uniform without insignia, except on formal occasions like October 22nd and April
the 20th, but he did wear the Old NVA rosette, the Battle of Portland ribbon, and
the Consolidation ribbon on his civilian shirts. Painting never talked about the old
days, and he came across as a mild-mannered old duffer, but Bob’s NVA brotherin-law Jason Stockdale once told Bob a story about Painting from that time which
caused him to treat the older man with a respect amounting to awe.
Once Painting had talked about BOSS in a general way. “Yeah, it’s true;
we’re pretty much above the law. It’s in the Constitution, in fact. We’re authorized
to take whatever action we consider necessary to safeguard the existence of the
Republic, because it has to be that way. Evil people want us all dead, my boy, and
sometimes the white man needs a blunt instrument to deal with that. It is the
highest calling in racial service. We have a motto that hangs in our office: We have
to win every time. The Jews only have to win once. Not a man or woman gets their
button in this organization unless and until they are known to possess the necessary
intelligence, patriotism, and judgment to exercise power like that for the good of
all. Every one of us has served in the regular military or the police, no exception.
You want to join BOSS? I’ll be glad to give you a recommendation, in about ten
years’ time, when I’ve been able to give you a good long looking over, and I know
that you will not ever commit a single act in your life which is not in the service of
this country and the mighty fine race of people who live in it.”
One night Bob caught a show on TV involving BOSS agents allegedly
arresting a beautiful young woman for falling in love with a negro online, dragging
her away to a cellar, and subjecting her to sickeningly graphic sexual torture. He
turned it off in a rage and ranted about it the next day to Vincent Cardinale. “Yeah,
I remember that show,” he said. “They’re re-running it?”
“On the Drama Channel,” said Bob.
“I’m surprised. I thought they got the message.”
“What?” asked Bob.
“They did that shit in secret,” Cardinale told him. “All of the credits at the
end were phony names, but we found out who they were. The scriptwriter and the
producer were Jews, big surprise, and the director was some fag. They did it out of
New York, again big surprise. Our station up there tracked them down and cacked
the kikes, threw one of them out of a thirty-story window and shot the second one
in an underground parking garage in Tribeca. They broke into the faggot’s
apartment, cut his balls off, and Fed-Exed them to the network’s producer. I’ll let
our guys up there know some idiot at Drama Channel re-ran it. Betcha they don’t
do it again.”
Bob met with Georgia at least once a week in the Zombie Master’s office to
debrief her during her alleged “therapy” sessions, and in a sense, they were indeed
therapeutic, although not for Bob so much. What Wallace was doing to her made
Bob want to scream out loud and rip Wallace’s face off with his bare hands, but
what chilled him was the way Georgia seemed simply to accept it as a kind of
sexual variety. He found it best to steer clear of the whole subject whenever
possible. He and the Master concentrated on gently pumping Georgia, going over
every minute of her days in the White House and getting from her everything and
everyone she saw, heard, overheard, or simply sensed as a vibe.
The mine of information that could be obtained purely from someone
wandering around the corridors of power was incredible. Within several sessions
the WPB knew who on the Joint Chiefs of Staff was in charge of what aspects of
Operation Strikeout, how many HE and bio-war missiles each submarine was
packing (24 each, half targetable Cruises and half biological warheads), and at
least half of the specific Army and Marine combat brigades that would be used in
Groups North, Center, and South. They learned that the Americans had heard
rumors of Bluelight, but that Kanesha Knight’s alien obsession had turned the
whole subject into something of a joke, and there was a tendency to write the
whole subject off as a canard. Georgia could not pick up anything that indicated
any concern as to the vulnerability of the American spy satellite network, and the
Special Planning Group in Olympia took comfort in the fact. More importantly,
they learned that Vice President Hugh Jenner and Admiral Hector Brava were not
fully on board with the whole invasion, or at least its details, and they were
regarded as Eeyores, to the extent that Wallace was seriously considering relieving
Brava of his post and dropping Jenner from the ONI ticket at the convention.
Most importantly, at the end of one session, Georgia passed on something
she had overheard from one of the stalls in the West Wing ladies’ room, when
Angela Herrin had stepped in to take a call from someone, and had referred to
something called the Apocalypse Option. “What’s that?” asked Bob
Georgia frowned. “Bob, I’m not sure—but I think it’s a plan they have to
use nuclear weapons against the Republic if things start going bad for the United
States once the war begins.”
“Holy Christ!” muttered the Zombie Master under his breath.
“Georgia, what exactly did the Herrin woman say? And do you have any
idea who she was talking to?” Bob asked her urgently.
“No idea, but she lapsed into some funny language at times. Not Yiddish. I
know the sound of Yiddish, Marvin babbles in it to his Jewish friends. Never heard
it before, something with a lot of hisses and throaty noises like she was trying to
hock a lugie.”
“Hebrew,” said the Master grimly. “Herrin is really Herrnstein, and she was
born and raised in Israel. So she was speaking to another Israeli. Maybe even her
real boss.”
“Georgia, what did she say in English?” prodded Bob gently. “Every word,
as exactly as you can remember.”
“Okay, I think I can give it to you pretty much verbatim,” Georgia
responded. “She said, ‘I’ve tried to get him to kick off with Apocalypse, not just
hold it in reserve for a worst-case scenario, so we can kill millions of the Jewhating schmucks right off the bat, but he’s concerned the radiation will mess up
Vancouver and get the Canucks all pissed off, plus he’s worried it will freak out
the goyim and fuck up his re-election. Yes, I’ve told him that. We control the
voting machines and it doesn’t matter what the hell the goyim really vote like, but
he’s worried about his legacy, that kind of dreck. I tried to get him on board with
the expense aspect, told him it will cost too much and bankrupt the country to ship
all the millions of racists to Antarctica, because we’ll have to at least make some
show of building them shelters and feed them something, shit like that, and since
we’re sending them there to die anyway, why not just fry their pig-eating asses and
have done with it? But he keeps trying to play political angles. He’s agreed to keep
the Apocalypse card up his sleeve in case these stupid Pentagon schmendricks
can’t beat a few racist Davy Crocketts and their squirrel guns. I’ll keep on pushing
it.” Most of it was in Hebrew, or whatever the language was. Oh, yeah, I remember
one phrase she used when she hung up. Am Yiz Roll Kye.”
“Am Yisroel Chai,” said the Zombie Master. “It means ‘Israel must live.’
God damn them!”
“Georgia, I know I promised that we wouldn’t ask you to fish for specific
information, because it’s so dangerous,” Bob told her carefully. “But surely you
must realize how important it is that we learn everything we can about this socalled Apocalypse Option. I won’t ask you to put yourself at risk, just keep your
eyes and ears extra wide open.”
“We’ve got ten minutes left, Georgia,” said the Zombie Master kindly. “I
suppose I’d better use it to do what the government is paying me twelve hundred
dollars an hour for. How are you holding up?”
“I’m scared all the time,” she admitted. “I wish—I wish I could see you
more, Bobby.”
“I wish I could too, Peanut, but you’re under Secret Service surveillance,” he
told her. “If I do more than drop off your smokes occasionally, they’re going to
wonder about me and start digging around.”
“Keeping off the booze and the weed?” the shrink asked her.
“Yeah, although it’s hard. I’m spending more time over at Mom’s house.
The nanny is a nice lady from Guatemala, and she lets me play with Allura. I know
I have to do this for her, so she can Go Home and she won’t turn into someone like
me. That has to happen. Bobby, remember what you said about the old NVA
asking for twenty-four hours when a Volunteer was caught, before he or she broke
under torture? I’ve thought about it, and I think I can do it, for Allura. Promise me,
Bobby, if I get caught, you’ll use that twenty-four hours to get Allura away from
there and take her home to Montana. It’s too late for me, but not for her. Promise
me, Bobby!”
“It’s not too late for you, and you’ll both Go Home,” said Bob firmly.
“Yeah, and we’ll live happily ever after.”
“You will,” he said with a nod.
“Bobby, that’s the nicest piece of pure bullshit anybody ever said to me.
You’re sweet.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I mean it. Promise me. Allura
goes Home, no matter what.”
“I promise,” he told her.
XIII. Close Encounter Of The Absurd Kind
(D-Day minus 3 days)
Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. - Allen Ginsberg
On the warm and sunny evening of June 18, Bob Campbell was in full
Chicago Richie mode as he delivered an ice cooler full of rib-eye steaks, chicken
leg quarters, and Polish kielbasa to a frat house on the campus of American
University and collected a paper bag full of cash in return. The consignment of
forbidden flesh set the wealthy frat boys back over $20,000. Inflated Federal
Reserve notes good only for rats to nest in, true, but twenty grand was still a pretty
penny for a backyard barbecue.
Bob’s special cell phone buzzed in his jeans pocket, the one he used for
Operation Belladonna only. Bob moved out onto the sidewalk outside the frat
house, stepped beneath a stately elm and flipped the phone open. He read a text
message from Georgia Myers to her Jewish stepsister Talia Halberstam, Marvin’s
daughter from a previous marriage, a quasi-friend whom she had begun cultivating
again at the WPB’s request, and Marvin’s. Now that she was working at the White
House, even if only as a high-end hooker, Georgia was persona grata again in the
family. Talia and she were getting very chummy, a Jewish BFF being an excellent
cover for a Nazi spy.
Every text message that Georgia sent to her stepsister actually did go to
Talia Halberstam’s phone, so that if the Secret Service or DHS ever checked, they
would find all the messages duly delivered and recorded there. Thanks to Birdie
the criminal techie geek, who was making a fortune off Vinnie Skins’ business,
text messages from Georgia’s phone were double-transmitted on a different
frequency sufficiently close to the phone’s normal operating frequency to mask the
fact, and were copied to Bob and Betsy both.
Georgia did not dare bring a disposable or other second device past White
House security, in view of the questions it would provoke, so she had to use her
own personal phone. In order to communicate with her handlers and remain
undetected, Georgia had to compose a text to her stepsister which made apparent
sense, but which contained hidden messages for the two Circus ops. In this case
Bob read “Hoi, Talya – How did Sherman recep go? Was Larry high whole time
again?” Bob had no idea who Larry was, and it didn’t matter. The important
things were the misspellings in the salutation. Misspelling Talia’s name told them
that Georgia wanted an emergency meeting, and the second misspelling indicated
extreme urgency.
Bob used the Belladonna phone to call Betsy. Their two phones were
programmed to break up transmissions between different cell relays, encrypt same,
then bounce them off an old Euro-satellite from the 1990s stationed above D.C.
that was still working, but which wasn’t equipped for monitoring from earth.
Nonetheless, conversations had to be kept short and cryptic. “Did you get that?”
Bob asked her.
“Yeah,” said Betsy. “Looks like Larry’s been a bad boy again.”
“Hey, sweetness, I feel like a bite to eat, and I don’t mean food,” said Bob
lewdly. “Meet me at the Roller Derby?” Anyone listening would assume he was a
client making a business date with working girl Betsy. The Roller Derby was a
Georgetown nightclub, but in code, it referred to the actual proposed meeting place
with Belladonna, which was a chew-easy on L Street, a Middle Eastern restaurant
that paid the requisite bribes to the authorities so they could serve meat dishes to
patrons. Kassim’s Garden of Delights was a restaurant and bar with cameras
inside, but none in the outdoor piazza eating area, which was discreetly accessible
through a wrought-iron gate on L Street and also a rear alley. The owner was
Abdel Kassim, born Sheldon Silverstein in Tel Aviv, who arranged for his garden
tables to be unmonitored through the simple expedient of bribing his brother-inlaw in the DHS. It was a popular meeting place for people in government and
organized crime who wanted a quiet tête-a-tête off the electronic record for
assorted amatory, financial, or illegal pursuits, and Abdel/Sheldon surcharged
accordingly.
“I can’t make it,” she told him. “I’m kind of tied up right now.” This was
SOP as well; both handlers never came to an emergency meeting.
Bob fought off the temptation to ask “Literally?” and instead he said, “Tell
you what, I’ll head on over there, and if you can get free, give me a call and we’ll
hook up,” indicating he would take the meet at the kebab joint.
“You got it, stud,” said Betsy, and hung up. She would pass the information
on to Vinnie Skins that something serious had happened and Richie was going for
an unscheduled meet with Belladonna. They were coming to trust Georgia’s
instincts. She was holding up better than they had expected, and if she thought
something was important enough to break pattern, it probably was. Bob texted
Georgia back, a pre-loaded spam text telling her that he was an exiled African head
of state who urgently needed her bank account number, so he could split the
fortune he had embezzled from the national treasury with her. This informed
Georgia where the meet would be.
An hour later Bob was sitting at a table in the hot, muggy summer twilight
under an umbrella in the outdoor section of the Garden of Delights, sipping an
insanely overpriced imported beer and munching on artichoke and goat cheese
hors d’oeuvres that may have born some vague resemblance to what people ate in
some unspecified part of the Middle East. There were a lot of these Israeli-run
Middle Eastern restaurants, and they were usually generic places like this that
served the Tel Aviv equivalent of fast food. Bob saw Georgia slip inside from the
L Street entrance. She was wearing a neat beige pants suit of the kind known to the
fashion world as a Hillary, and she looked like any District civil servant or office
worker out for dinner, except her beauty caught the eye of every man and many of
the women in the place. It was always difficult for Georgia to remain truly
inconspicuous. She strolled over and sat down with the scruffily dressed buttlegger
type at the white wrought-iron table. Kassim’s was well known as a place for such
incongruous meetings. “You okay leaving the White House in the middle of shift,
if that’s what you call it?” asked Bob.
“Hunter’s at a diplomatic do at the U.N. in New York, and he won’t be back
until midnight,” said Georgia. “They don’t mind if I take a long lunch, so to speak,
and I don’t have to order up room service from the mess if I want to go out. I just
take a lunch break like the other staff. I’m not in jail there; they just watch me like
I was. I’m sure they’re tracking me on camera, but you said this place was safe. No
spy cameras.”
“Yes, which is why your coming here may raise a red flag when they
wonder where you’ve gotten to,” said Bob. “You need to have a quick salad or
something and go. What’s up?”
“The government is going to kill Kanesha Knight and blame it on you guys,”
Georgia told him.
“What?”
“They’re going to assassinate the head of the CIA,” she went on. “That’s the
excuse they’re going to use to invade the Northwest Republic. They’re going to
say you killed her. It’s going to happen tonight.”
Back in the White House, Secret Service Special Agent Lee Lyons got a call
from Agent Lee Wing Chan in the downstairs monitoring room. “Sir, you asked for
anything unusual regarding FWOTUS’s movements?” In the absence of a
FLOTUS, a First Lady Of The United States, the Secret Service had adopted the
codename FWOTUS to designate the woman in Georgia’s job slot—First Whore
Of The United States. It was strictly unofficial, but of course everybody in the
White House knew it and was in on the joke, except for poor Georgia herself. She
thought her Secret Service codename was the romantic-sounding “Moonstone.”
“Report,” ordered Lyons.
“FWOTUS went out for dinner, and she stepped into Shel Silverstein’s
kebab hole up on L Street,” said Chan. “That’s a dead zone.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Lyons. “We keep bitching and sending nasty memos to
DHS, but for some reason they won’t do anything about it. Silverstein’s probably
paying somebody off over there.”
“She may be just eating falafel for supper,” said Chan.
“Or she may be meeting somebody she shouldn’t be,” said Lyons. “Maybe
she has a boyfriend she’s still seeing, in violation of her contract, which would be
understandable in view of—never mind. If we can catch her stepping out on
POTUS, I can get her contract canceled early and get her lovely ass out of here.
Check it out. Get down there and get an eyeball on her. If she’s meeting somebody,
stick with him or her, and let’s get an ID on them.”
“I’m on it, sir,” said Chan.
Back at the kebab garden, the two of them were interrupted by a Mexican
waiter who took their dinner order. Bob was pleased to note that Georgia eschewed
wine or beer and ordered Afghan tea. When the waiter was gone Bob said, “Okay,
give it to me from the top.”
“We did seventh inning stretch early so Hunter could catch Air Force One
up to New York, and after I got cleaned up I went up to the residence the back way
like I usually do,” Georgia told him. “All of a sudden the door to the cabinet room
opens up ahead of me, and Janet Chalupiak and that big black Secret Service guy
Jimbo Hadding come out and start walking down the hall together. They didn’t see
me behind them, and they’re talking about Kanesha Knight getting killed in some
kind of drive-by shooting late tonight. The word around the West Wing is that
Hadding is Hunter Wallace’s hit man when he wants somebody taken care of.”
“Yeah, we’ve picked up on that elsewhere,” Bob told her, nodding. “You
need to be extra careful around him. What exactly did they say?”
“Well, I couldn’t very well tiptoe up behind them and eavesdrop, but
Chalupiak says for Hadding to make sure he’s wearing a mask, but make sure the
white guys on the team aren’t, so the cameras will pick up on Kanesha and her
bodyguard getting whacked out by white men. Then they’ll photoshop the
surveillance tapes to make sure the Secret Servicemen aren’t identifiable, and
change their faces to known BOSS agents.”
“BOSS doesn’t work outside the Republic, only WPB and CMI,” said Bob.
“Maybe they don’t know that, or don’t care,” said Georgia. “Anyway, Janet
asked Hadding if he minded killing a black woman and her black bodyguard if it
would start the war that wiped out the Republic and killed millions of white racists,
and Jimbo says, ‘Fuck it, I kill anybody I tole to kill. I gits paid all de same.’”
“The noble African at his best,” commented Bob.
“You wanted to know when the war was going to start,” said Georgia.
“Well, looks like this thing tonight will begin the countdown.”
“Yeah, there will be a couple of days of ranting and raving and buildup in
the media about us wicked Northwest racists, how dare we raise our hands to a
Strong Black Womyn? How dare we even exist? Then they attack. Jesus!” swore
Bob. He glanced up. The patio doors into the restaurant proper were open, and he
looked right into the eyes of an Asian man standing at the bar in a dark, button-
down suit and tie, who was looking directly at Georgia and him. The Asian’s eyes
flickered briefly and he looked away, his face expressionless. For some reason,
Bob got a tingling chill in his spine, and he was suddenly certain that the man was
watching them, and he was up to no good. Then he spotted the small earphone
mike in the man’s ear and he was sure of it. Damn! She was followed here! he
thought. He quickly decided not to tell Georgia; he needed her calm and on point
now, not rattled with paranoia. He took out his buttlegger phone. “Hang on. I need
to set up a meet with my boss. He has to know about this right away.”
“Your mysterious boss that I don’t get to meet or know his name?” asked
Georgia archly.
“That’s the guy,” said Bob. The waiter brought their food. He texted “Out of
rotten blues & pearly whites, new business, need 5 and 3 units. Will watch for your
call.” Anyone intercepting the text that was familiar with the flesh and plant
peddling business would assume he was asking Vinnie Skins for five cartons of
British-made Rothman’s filters and three pounds of chicken breasts. “New
business” did not mean a new customer, it meant something urgent had come up,
and watch for the call instead of wait for it let Cardinale know that Bob had reason
to believe he was under physical surveillance. “Okay, Georgia, I want you to finish
up your hummus or whatever that is, get up, smile at me in case you’re on candid
camera, and then I want you to go back to the White House. You just went out for
dinner, is all.”
“What are you going to do about the CIA woman who’s going to get killed
tonight?” asked Georgia.
“I don’t know. It’s not my call, but keep a sharp ear out over there and be
ready to go for a therapy session with Doctor Jake tomorrow morning, even if it’s
not your regular day,” he told her. “Things will start moving real fast now.”
Georgia was a quick study in the espionage game, and so after finishing her
plate of unidentifiable goo she stood up and left per instruction. Bob kept an eye on
the Asian at the bar, and he saw him watch Georgia leave. The Oriental did not
follow her, nor did he take out his phone. Bob started to wonder if he had been
mistaken about the man. He ordered another beer and made a show of casually
watching a niggerball game on his phone while he sipped, keeping a covert eye on
the Asian, who seemed in no hurry either to leave. About half an hour later Vincent
Cardinale and Duke dropped into the seats at his table.
“Where’s the bad boy?” asked Cardinale.
“Gook in the dark suit by the bar,” said Bob. “That guy’s got cop written all
over him, and I should know, because I’m one myself. He appeared about ten
minutes after our lady rocked up and I’m convinced he was watching us. Plus his
ear decoration.”
“He forgot to take it out when he left the White House,” said Cardinale. “I
know him. He’s a Secret Service agent named Victor Chan. Yeah, looks like
you’re now a made man, so to speak. Do you think he’s reported back to his people
yet? Has he used his phone?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” said Bob.
“He stayed with you and didn’t follow Belladonna. You’re still sitting here
and not getting dragged away to the cellars of the J. Edgar Hoover building, so that
means they want to see who you are and where you go. Now they see us and make
the buttlegging connection, the Secret Service will figure our lady is maybe just
working an angle to peddle smokes in the West Wing or something like that. If
we’re lucky and the president finds her charms especially irresistible, she’ll just get
a warning to stay away from known criminals like you, you naughty boy. Tonight
he’ll follow you and see where you go, so just finish your route as usual, come
back to Arlington, and let’s hope to hell I’m reading this right and we all of us
don’t end up in the torture cellars. Now, what was the emergency meet about?”
Bob ran down for them what Georgia had told him. “Shit!” said Cardinale
under his breath.
“What do we do, boss?” asked Duke.
“This changes things. We have to at least try to stop that hit!” said Cardinale
decisively. “I don’t know if it will make any difference, but if we can blow the lid
off and at least let people know it wasn’t us but Wallace’s goons cacking their own
Sheba, it will take a lot of the wind out of their sails. I doubt they’ll call off the
invasion, but it will sure gum up the works propaganda-wise. But we have to get
on it now. We have to figure out when and where and how it’s going down.”
“What about our inscrutable friend at the bar?” asked Duke.
“We can’t have him following us around all night, considering what we’ll be
up to,” said Cardinale. “Normally I wouldn’t cack a federal agent due to all the
repercussions, but in a matter of days we’re going to be at war, and we’re about to
be up to our ears in repercussions no matter what. Looks like that flatface gets to
be the first casualty of the Great Northwest War, or whatever historians decide to
call it. One of theirs and not one of ours, which I hope is a good omen.”
“The alley behind here is part of the dead zone,” Duke reminded him. “My
main Red Sea pedestrian Shel pays for that so his customers can park elsewhere or
take the bus and come and go through a private door and stay off digital. Nearest
cameras are on M Street. We need to get flatface out back and take him there.”
“I’ll do it,” said Bob. “Don’t worry, I’m up for it. You guys split, I’ll finish
my beer, and then I’ll leave by the alley gate. He’ll follow me out, since I’m the
one he’s interested in. I’ve got my buttlegger gun, I’ll use it, then I’ll break contact
with the scene. I’ll find someplace private to disassemble the weapon; I’ll toss the
pieces and meet you at one of the E&E points back in Virginia.”
Cardinale shook his head. “Sorry to rain on your NVA fantasy, young
Galahad, but we need to keep you clean and uncompromised if at all possible,” he
said. “You’re here for one reason and one reason only, to run point on Belladonna,
hold that lady’s hand and blow in her ear, whatever you have to do to keep her
functioning. No one is ever indispensible, but right now, you’re about as close as
it’s possible to get. Don’t worry, Duke’s got this. You got your Dear John?” Duke
patted his shirt pocket, which seemed to contain nothing but a pen. “Okay, Duke
and I are going to leave through the main restaurant, all very cheerful and
goombata. We will be seen to leave on camera, and ching ling ding over there will
be seen to remain in his seat, ignoring us and watching Richie, whom we hope to
God he hasn’t actually photographed and phoned in yet. Rich, you finish your beer,
pay the waiter, and exactly five minutes from the time we leave the table, you
leave by the alley gate and turn right toward M Street. We assume our spook gook
from Sixteen Hundred will follow you. Do not step onto M, because then you will
be on camera again and they will be able to place you in the alley. Just before you
reach M Street there’s a dumpster, and before the dumpster, there is an unmarked
glass door. It will be unlocked. Go in and walk down the hall like you own the
place, and ignore anybody you meet. Here’s those five cartons of Rothmans you
asked for,” said Cardinale, slipping him a plastic bag under the table. “Put them in
your backpack and if anybody challenges you, tell them you got some plant life for
the guys in IT.”
“What is the place?” asked Bob.
Cardinale chuckled, “It’s the Washington Post, and as a matter of liberal
courtesy the régime keeps their offices and street entrances free of surveillance. At
the end of the hallway, you’ll see another door that opens onto Fifteenth Street. I’ll
pick you up there. In the meantime, Duke will have taken care of that monkey on
your back. Duke, when he’s down you rob his ass, take his gun and his badge and
his wallet, and above all make sure you get his phone. They probably won’t buy
that it’s a street mugging, but we’ll give it a shot. This is going to bring heat on
Belladonna no matter what, but that’s unavoidable now. Richie, you need to stay
on top of her sitch over there. The minute she’s in danger, we extract. Vital
mission or not, that gal is a brave comrade, and I’m not handing her over to the
Dershowitz needles if we can get her out in time. Duke, give me a call when you’re
done, and I’ll pick you up on the fly in McPherson Square. Rich, you got all that?”
he demanded.
“Yes, sir,” said Bob.
“Okay, your five minutes start now.” Duke and Vinnie Skins got up and left
the table.
Five minutes and a bit later, Richie/Bob pushed open the glass door in the
rear of the Washington Post building and strolled down a long, cool, air-
conditioned and carpeted corridor. To his left he could see through the glass walls
a huge, busy and bustling newspaper office with desks and computers and a
properly diverse cross-section of liberal yuppie humanity tapping on the
computers. The Post was one of only about a dozen actual printed newspapers left
in the United States, although their press run was subsidized by federal funds in the
name of “American heritage.” Other than New York and the District itself, the
paper was virtually unobtainable throughout the country, since almost no one read
newspapers anymore, but the Post and the Gray Lady, the New York Times, as
well as the Wall Street Journal, were the official voices of the United States
government and as such rated the dignity of the traditional printed page.
To his consternation, Bob saw one of his regular customers coming out of
one of the men’s rooms on his right, one of the Post’s reporters. Harrison Hart was
a harried-looking man in his thirties with a frizz of blond hair and glasses, and
despite the air-conditioning, his short-sleeved yellow pastel shirt was soaked with
sweat and his loose tie was drooping. “Richie!” Hart exclaimed. “Great! Just the
man! I was going to give you a call. Got any butts on you?”
Bob knew he shouldn’t stop, and he also knew that although he hadn’t
looked back, the Asian Secret Serviceman might be behind him and Duke might be
about to shoot him or garrote him or whatever he was going to do right in the Post
building, if he hadn’t been able to intercept the fed outside. But blowing Hart off
would be out of character for a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, and would cause his
visit to be remembered. Bob looked around, and couldn’t see anyone else in the
long hallway, and so he motioned Hart back into the men’s room. Once inside he
said, “I’m on my way to a drop, but I got a spare carton of Rothman’s I can let you
hold for a couple of G-notes,” he told the newshound.
Hart shuffled in his wallet. “All I have on me is a monkey,” he said. “Can I
owe you the rest?”
“Come on, Harry, you know that’s not how it works,” said Richie. “Cash on
delivery. It’s two hundred a pack. Tell you what, gimme the monkey and I’ll give
you three packs. Call it a good customer discount.”
“You’re a prince among men, Richie,” said Hart gratefully, handing over the
five hundred dollars. Bob tore open one of the cartons of cigarettes, handed Hart
three packs, and pocketed the money. A minute later Campbell stepped out onto
15th Street and got into Vinnie Skins’ late-model Lincoln, run on sinfully expensive
premium gasoline instead of politically correct and even more expensive electric
UPS. Cardinale was on the phone, which he closed as soon as Bob got in.
“Duke’s done,” he said. “Now we pick him up, and I try to think of some
way to save a nigger’s life. One of the things they don’t teach you at Whidbey
Island is how fucking ironic this job can get sometimes.” Several minutes later,
they spotted Duke lounging on a bench in McPherson Square. He got into the back.
“Flatface get his Dear John letter?” asked Cardinale.
“Yeah. He was devastated,” replied Duke. “In the alley, and I went out the
same way I came in. Nothing on camera.”
“What’s Dear John?” asked Bob.
Duke took out the pen from his shirt pocket and handed it over the seat to
Bob. “Ordinary ball point pen, to all appearances,” he explained. “It even writes.
Take both ends and rotate them in opposite directions. Yeah, like that. They come
apart. Now put them back together but in reverse. See?”
“It’s a little gun!” exclaimed Bob admiringly.
“Yeah. A single twenty-two-caliber long rifle hollow-point cartridge goes
inside. Half a twist to the right to cock it, squeeze the clip-on to fire it. Of course
you got to be at point blank range, and you have to hit a vital spot in the head,
through the eye or the ear, or in this case the base of the skull at a forty-five degree
angle. Best to use it like you would a knife, press it into the target’s body and use
his own flesh and bone as a silencer. That’s how the Office writes somebody a
Dear John letter.” Bob handed the tiny weapon back to Duke.
“You get the gook’s phone?” asked Cardinale.
“Yeah, I checked it out while I was waiting for you before I took out the
chip and tossed it. Lot of Secret Service numbers and stuff we can send to the
analysis unit back Home, and I found a photo of Richie and Belladonna, one of
Richie, and one of us three together, but I checked his last outgoing calls and he
didn’t make any from the Garden. I don’t think he transmitted the photos.”
“The gods are watching over us, as always,” said Cardinale with a sigh of
relief. “Okay, now how do we stop this Kanesha Knight rubout?”
“First problem, maybe insurmountable, is that they know the when and
where, and we don’t,” offered Duke practically. “If we have her private phone
number and GPS we can do a trace.”
“Or maybe just plain call her and warn her?” suggested Bob.
“And say what?” asked Cardinale. “‘Hi, Kanesha, we’re the wicked racists
you’re planning on exterminating, but we have a soft spot in our hearts for brown
sugar, so we figured we’d tip you the wink that your boss is going to throw you
under the bus, literally?’ I don’t even think we have her phone number. We try to
keep up to date on data like that, but it’s hard. CIA personnel are issued those
souped-up satellite phones that actually acquire and use a different number for
each call, like the old dial-up computers used a different dynamic IP address for
every log-on.”
“CIA headquarters is in Langley, Virginia, right?” asked Bob. “Maybe
they’re planning on killing her in her own office building, but Georgia said she
specifically overheard reference to a drive-by shooting. They’ll probably attack
Mammy K between her office and home. Do we know where she lives?”
“Of course,” said Cardinale. “In Southeast. Anacostia. But we don’t know if
she’s going straight home. She may be working late, she may have some kind of
social function or work-related meeting elsewhere, or she may be going to a
nightclub to boogie until dawn,” Cardinale glanced at his watch. “It’s eight o’clock
now. We have no clue where she actually is. Belladonna just said it would be
tonight. It may be going down as we speak, dammit!”
“I notice Hunter Wallace is very noticeably out of town,” said Duke. “As if
anyone would think he needs an alibi. The guilty flee where no man pursueth, and
all that Shakespearean crap. That nigger Hadding is supposed to be his personal
bodyguard. I wonder what excuse they’ll come up with as to why he’s not with his
boss in New York?”
“Maybe Hadding is the key,” said Bob slowly. “He’s the only lead we have.
He’s the only individual we know who’ll be in the right place at the right time.
Any chance we could track him instead of the negress? Do Secret Service agents
also get those special phones you talked about?”
“Their phones use special encryption, and their GPS is masked against
anything we’ve got or anything Birdie’s got,” said Cardinale. “But his fucking
FLEC card won’t be masked! Duke, get Birdie on the horn and tell him we’re
coming over, rush job, money no object.”
“Birdie’s not Office,” warned Duke. “He’s just a player. We use him to track
a federal agent, he’s going to wise up to the fact that we do more than peddle
cancer sticks and glazed ham.”
Cardinale nodded. “I know, but this is an emergency. I may be overly
pessimistic. We may actually be able to stop the whole fucking invasion if we
prevent the ostensible casus belli. That means we have to give it a shot, no matter
what the risk. Actually, if we can find out when and where, and we can interdict
the hit successfully, I have an idea as to how we can turn this whole thing really to
our advantage. But we have to get into the loop first. I’ll talk to Birdie tonight. I’ll
tell him the bare minimum he needs to know, which is that we’re gonna need his
help like never before, but he doesn’t get to ask question one. When it’s over he’ll
have enough money to retire for the rest of his life, but if he rats us out we have
friends who will douse him with gasoline, put a rubber tire around his neck, and
touch a match to him.”
George Byrd turned out to be a slender, geeky individual of indeterminate
age who lived in the house he had inherited from his mother on a quiet back street
in Arlington. Cardinale told Bob on the way over that the land on which the house
stood was worth tens of millions of dollars, but Byrd refused to sell his childhood
home and instead made his money the old-fashioned American way, by stealing it.
Birdie’s kingdom was in his basement, a huge bay full of computer equipment and
electronic gadgetry that looked like a mad scientist’s laboratory, which in a way it
was. A few taps on the keyboard got him into the Social Security database where
he retrieved the SSAN for one James Roscoe Hadding, and from then on, it was
child’s play for someone who knew how to hack into any computer system in the
world, which apparently, Byrd could. He established an uplink with a private
corporate satellite that was used by the world financial industry for its own
assorted spying purposes, and piggybacked onto Bank of America’s system.
Within a matter of minutes, he had located the said James Roscoe Hadding. “Got
him,” said Byrd. “Right now he’s on basement level at sixteen hundred
Pennsylvania Avenue, but on a wild guess, I’d say you guys knew that already.
What the hell are you into now, Vinnie? Who is this guy?”
“He’s a guy who’s planning on giving us some problems, so we’re gonna
return the favor,” said Cardinale. “You need to keep us posted on his whereabouts
for the next few hours. Duke and I need to get going now, but I’ll leave my man
Richie here with you, in case you need any help.”
“What kind of help? You matrixed?” asked Birdie.
“I don’t even know what that means,” replied Bob.
“It means you don’t know shit about computers, IT, or telecommunications.
So how can you help?”
“We’re going to need you to follow this guy around for us, all night, and
Rich here will pass the info on to me,” said Cardinale. “Did I mention that money
was no object? Here’s a down payment.” He tossed down a flat pack of thousanddollar bills of enormous thickness that he pulled from his jacket pocket; it must
have been a couple of hundred grand, at least. Birdie eyed the money but did not
pick it up.
“You’re going to whack a federal agent, or somebody politically connected
enough to be hanging at the White House at this time of night,” he said. “Not that
I’m opposed in principle, mind, but something tells me I need to know what the
itinerary is before I sign up for this cruise. So what the hell’s going on?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” said Bob quietly, before Cardinale could say a word.
“Never mind the money, Mr. Byrd. That’s not what this is about, not for us,
although don’t worry, you’ll get paid. I’ll level with you: if any of us get caught,
we’re dead, including you. What we’re going to be doing is illegal as hell, but it’s
not wrong. I don’t know if you see any difference in your own worldview, and if
not, I’m not judging you, but that’s the truth. We’re gonna take a break from being
criminals, and we’re gonna be heroes for a while. I hope you’ll join us. It may not
make us much money, but it feels damned good. We’re asking you to help save
lives. Maybe millions of lives, of people like ourselves. Good people. I know some
of them. White people. Men, women, children, like my wife and my children and
my family back where I come from, who are going to be murdered because they
have white skin and because they won’t bow down to a dog. That’s what the hell is
going on.”
“Yeah?” said Byrd, looking at them. Cardinale nodded. “You know, Vin, I
always figured your crew was a bit sharper than was right for our little slice of life,
and there was something going on below ground with you lot.” He picked up the
pack of bills. “Keep it. If you’re from where I think you’re from, I and my
twinkling keyboard fingers are at your service, and there won’t be any charge.”
“Thanks, Birdie,” said Cardinale.
After they left, Byrd said, “Richie, right? I remember I made your FLEC
card. Not from Chicago, I daresay?”
“Nope,” replied Bob. “Never been there.”
“I’m sure you’re here to keep an eye on me and maybe whack me if I
crumple or turn rat on you. Fair enough. But I meant it.” He nodded upward. “My
mom died in the upstairs bedroom. She never moved out of it for eight years. She
was on her way home from work one night when niggers threw her into a van and
drove off with her. They dumped her three days later, after they were through with
her. Besides all the usual stuff they did to her, she was beaten within an inch of her
life, with crushed vertebrae in her spine that paralyzed her and put her in a wheel
chair, and brain damage so she could never talk or think right again. I dropped out
of MIT and I took care of her from then on.”
“Why didn’t you Go Home to the Northwest after she died?” Bob Campbell
asked him.
“Partly because we’re old Virginia people. Ever heard of William Byrd, the
colonial plantation owner? Very famous. Historians used to write books and
dissertations about his journals from the seventeenth century. I’m the last Byrd of
Virginia, and I figured I should run out the clock here. But mostly it’s because
Mom left me this house, and if I didn’t live here the asshole developers would find
some way to get hold if it, file an eminent domain writ or some such shit, use the
law to steal my home like happens all the time in this country when the rich want
what the poor have. Naboth had a vineyard, if you’re into the Bible. That’s why I
need a heavy cash flow: I keep a team of lawyers on retainer just to fight off the
corporations who want this little house, and they don’t come cheap. They’d tear it
down for condos or boutiques or some such shit. Then there would be nothing left
of her at all, nothing she knew or touched, nothing that remembered her, if you get
what I’m saying? I won’t let her be extinguished by black animals, erased as if she
never existed. I stay here so this house and I will still remember her together, and
in the meantime I make it a point to do whatever I can to fuck up the system.”
“You understand that things may get really dangerous, and they may find
out?” asked Bob. “You may have to Come Home anyway, because you’ll no
longer have a choice if you want to live.”
“Yeah, I get that,” said Birdie. “Look, I’m not Norman Bates. I know she’s
dead, and at some point, it gets time to move on. This looks like it might be a good
way to segue into a new time and place. Don’t worry. I’m in. All the way.”
Back at the Arlington warehouse, Cardinale quickly assembled a team of six
men and two women, most of the wet workers attached to the D.C. station. He
explained his plan to them. Betsy spoke up, “Uh, boss, all due respect and all that,
but are you sure you haven’t flipped your lid?”
“Maybe,” admitted Cardinale. “Look, comrades, I know this makes the
whole operation a lot more dangerous. One thing we learned back in the day is
when you go in, you go in to kill quick and vanish. No frills, no conversation, no
Three Musketeers swashbuckling, just get the job done and then break contact with
the scene fast, before Fattie or the cops can react. I know this violates that basic
principle. I suppose that logically, we should just go in and take out everybody,
including the CIA mammy, make a clean sweep of it.
“But remember, we have a larger mission here, and there is a big picture.
Kanesha Knight is an affirmative action employee these morons put into one of the
most sensitive positions in their government for the sole reason that she’s got a pair
of black knockers. One of our most vital tactics has always been to take out key
people in the enemy régime and ruling class who either pose a direct threat to the
Republic, or often someone whom our intelligence and political analysts predict
might develop into a threat in years to come. Nip their asses in the bud. But there’s
a flip side to that. Sometimes an enemy individual is such a complete incompetent
dipshit that it’s actually better for the Republic’s interests in the long run for them
to remain where they are, and let them gum up the works from within.
“In my opinion, this applies to Mammy K. She believes we’re in contact
with UFOs, for Christ’s sake! The Americans gave control of one of their major
intelligence services to a kook for idiotic political reasons, and stupidity like that is
a gift from the gods to us that we shouldn’t waste. We need to make sure this black
bitch stays where she is, but in a state of such complete paranoia and confusion
that we can knock the whole Central Intelligence Agency out of the game, at least
for a while, and force the Americans to deal with a major public embarrassment
before they can get her out of there and get the CIA back up and running. Betsy,
you’ll be taking the most risk here, so if you have any doubts about it…”
“No, actually I think it will be a real hoot,” she said with a giggle. “Hey, if
that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll render an Oscar-winning performance.”
“That is, if we can figure out when and where Jimbo is going to make his
move,” said Duke dubiously. “We don’t know how many hostiles there will be or
what the kill zone will be like.”
“Duke, back in the day we used to call improvised tickles like that floats,”
said Cardinale with a grin. “Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember, and I also remember some Volunteers getting killed like
that,” replied Duke. “But it’s not like we have any choice.”
Cardinale pulled up a map on his computer. The NAR agents gathered
around. “Three teams. June Bug, Frankie G., Rudolph, and Williamson are Red
Team. You guys take the blue van. Tricia, Duke, and Little John are Gold Team.
You get the SUV, the Mountaineer. Betsy, you ride with me in the red Dodge. The
obvious problem is that we don’t yet know where they’re planning the ambush,
whether it’s in the Green Zone itself or somewhere on the Virginia side. I’m gonna
take an educated guess that it will be in the D.C. ESMA, because our intel
indicates they plan to use some unmasked white shooters whom they will then
photoshop with the faces of some of our own people back Home, in order to try
and claim that we whacked Mammy Kanesha. This means that they will need to do
it in some place they know is covered by CCTV, and surveillance over here isn’t
nearly as comprehensive as it is in the ESMA. I’m guessing again, when I assume
it will be at her house, which is at this address here, in Anacostia. Yeah, I know,
that’s a lot of guesswork, and we need to be ready to change plans quick.
“We go over into the District across the Fourteenth Street bridge at fiveminute intervals so we don’t all go through the checkpoint at once. We drive to
Anacostia, and then we run a parallel patrol through a twelve-block radius around
her house, with one double back and one lateral slide per circuit. If you were
absent that day at SoI on Whidbey Island, then get somebody who remembers the
course to drive. It will fool whatever dozy cop or affirmative action nigger is
monitoring the street cameras tonight, at least for a while. We’ll have to assess the
tactical situation on the fly, and guys, if it looks like we have to just waste these
bastards without playing my merry little jest, then that’s the way we roll.
Psychological warfare is all very well and good, but I don’t want anybody killed
because I feel in a waggish mood tonight.”
After more planning and going through projected possible scenarios,
Cardinale issued his crew with their uniform for the evening’s festivities, black
nylon jumpsuits and full motorcycle helmets with black-tinted face visors and rows
of blinking green and yellow LED lights over the visor and around the back of the
helmets. He also issued two of his men with special weapons, concussion and stun
grenades and hand-held laser pistols of an experimental prototype the NDF’s
Technical Warfare Division had come up with and shipped to them, to see if the
things were any good in the field. So far, Cardinale had found no practical
opportunity to use them for anything. Betsy came back into the room wearing her
costume for the evening, a long flowing white dress with a lot of sheer muslin
drapery. “You look like Princess Leia,” said June Bug, a scarred and tattooed 200pound man with a grizzled beard.
“She’s supposed to, up to a point,” said Cardinale. “Remember, the idea is to
leave CIA director Kanesha Knight alive but confused, and convinced she was
rescued from an assassination attempt by space aliens.” Cardinale’s phone rang,
and he flipped it open. “Yeah?”
“Monkoid on the move,” said Bob Campbell on the other end.
“Okay,” said Cardinale. “That’s good, because we’re ready to roll here. Let
me know if he crosses into Virginia.”
“You got it,” said Bob. “I’ll get back to you in a bit.”
“Last-minute potty trips and then we mount up, people,” called Cardinale.
“The game is afoot, as Sherlock Holmes said. Follow me down to Rosslyn, then we
circle for a while until we hear whether or not we go into the Green Zone.
Everybody keep their phone headsets on conference with full encrypt. We’ll
probably have to say some things in the clear tonight we really shouldn’t. Let’s just
hope DHS’s techs haven’t caught up to Birdie’s genius yet.” A few WPB agents hit
the john, then they went down to their assigned vehicles, fired up the engines, and
headed down Wilson Boulevard toward the Potomac. Betsy was driving the
Dodge. Just as they rolled under the gleaming skyscrapers of Rosslyn, Cardinale
got another call.
“He’s stopped, looks like he’s on foot, moving back and forth short
distances,” said Campbell.
“Setting up his ambush,” said Cardinale. “Where?”
“Thirty Fifty-One Massachusetts Avenue Northwest,” said Bob. “The South
African Embassy. Our feathered friend here was able to zero in on Mammy’s card
as well. Apparently, the Company’s FLEC encryption is out of date. They forgot to
do their bimonthly switchover, or they just couldn’t be bothered.”
“Can he confirm she’s on the premises?” asked Cardinale.
“Affirmative. Maybe she’s attending some kind of cocktail party or
reception celebrating the end of apartheid all those years ago, or something.”
“No, I remember now, she’s banging the nigger ambassador. Discovering
her roots and all that crap. His root, anyway. Can our friend let us know when Aunt
Jemima departs from the embassy?”
“He can,” Bob assured him. “He’s trying to hack into the DC Metro
surveillance room now so he can access the cameras around and inside the
embassy, so we can get an actual visual and not just the blip from her card.”
“Okay, we’re on our way, and let’s hope we don’t get there too damned late.
Keep me posted.” Cardinale hung up and clicked conference. “Listen up, boys and
girls. Looks like they’re going to hit the target as she leaves the South African
Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. Mammy’s limo will be either parked on the
street or more likely in the embassy courtyard, which is accessed off Massachusetts
through an electronically controlled iron gate. I figure our main monkoid will have
at least three other shooters, so we’ll extrapolate two hostile vehicles, both parked
on either side of the embassy to box the limo in when they leave, and some kind of
anti-tank weapon or explosive device to blow up or disable the limo and force
Mammy out. This will be tricky, people, a firefight in the dark. We have night
vision goggles and sights in our helmets, but so will they. We’ll approach via Rock
Creek Parkway, park our own vehicles on Thirtieth Street and Whitehaven Street,
and enter the fire zone on foot. This is Embassy Row, people, more cameras per
square foot than anywhere else in the District, so from the moment we park, we
will be on camera and the clock will be ticking. Remember your E&E procedures
we went over back at the house.”
Thirty minutes later, at a little past eleven o’clock, the WPB vehicles were in
place just off Massachusetts Avenue. “Don’t get out until I say so, but be ready,
helmets on, weapons locked and loaded,” Cardinale told them on the phone. He
himself pulled on his own mask, that of an extraterrestrial “Gray” from countless
science fiction movies over the past half century.
Several minutes later, he got another call from Bob Campbell. “We’re into
the embassy visual feed to the DC cops. They’re leaving now. She’s in the
courtyard and the driver’s holding the door open for her.”
“Can you cut the feed and blind the cops?” asked Cardinale.
Bob spoke briefly with Birdie on his end, then came back. “Yes.”
“Do it, now.” There was a brief pause.
“Done,” said Bob. “They’ll notice the outage, but you’ve got a few minutes
before they react.”
Cardinale got onto his conference. “Move out, now, stay low, and watch for
the enemy shooters.” He and Betsy exited their car. The whole WPB squad began
moving northward across the well-trimmed embassy lawns of Britain, Brazil, and
Bolivia. Ahead on the right side of the street, they could see and hear the iron gate
to the inner courtyard of the South African embassy clattering open, and a long
stretch limousine containing the CIA director and her driver slid out into the street.
Simultaneously the doors to a car on the right side of the street opened and two
white men in jeans and sweatshirts, unmasked, got out. Beneath the streetlights
Cardinale could see that they were hefting Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine
guns under their arms, ironically the same weapons that most of the Circus crew
were packing.
Cardinale ran forward on tiptoe; the two Secret Service agents were so intent
on their target in the limo that they didn’t hear him until he was ten feet behind
them. He shot one of them in the back of the head with the odd-looking laser gun
from TWD, which resembled an LED flashlight with a pistol grip. The weapon
zapped and smoked, and the federal agent dropped like a sack of potatoes. The
second agent had quick reflexes: he whirled and gaped at what appeared to be a
space alien in a suit aiming a ray gun at him, but managed to squeeze off a threeround burst from the submachine gun before Cardinale shot him in the chest three
times, noting with pleased approval that the laser cut through the man’s Kevlar
vest like it was cardboard. But the gunfire gave the game away. “Now! Hit ‘em!”
he shouted.
There was an explosion up ahead; the second Secret Service team had
expertly rolled incendiary grenades under the limousine as it reached the head of
the embassy driveway, and the vehicle was enveloped in flames. It probably would
have been safe to stay inside, since the limo in addition to being armored was
fireproof, but instead of hitting the gas and getting the hell out of there like
personal protection SOP dictated, the two negro occupants bailed out of the car in a
wild panic. Cardinale could see his own men wearing the blinking motorcycle
helmets, running toward the flaming car. In the poor light, they did indeed
resemble weird interstellar robots of some kind. “Can you see the hostiles?” he
shouted into his phone. “I got two of ‘em down on this side!”
“Three standing this side!” shouted back Duke. Kanesha Knight and her
black guard were running for the embassy front doors.
“Grenades!” yelled Cardinale, but it was unnecessary. The concussion and
stun grenades were already flying through the air and landed at the two negroes’
feet. They flashed and thumped the whole street, and the two monkoids collapsed
on the embassy’s broad front steps. Machine gun fire erupted up and down the
street, muzzle flashes flickering like sheet lightning. Windows were lighting up in
the embassy and black faces were peering outside. Cardinale turned around. “Bets,
you still with me?”
“Yeah, but only because I talked you out of making me wear high heels,”
she said from behind him.
“Get those peeping coons away from the windows,” he ordered. “We don’t
want anybody coming outside trying to drag our targets indoors.” Betsy braced
herself on the hood of a parked car, raised her own MP5 and methodically sprayed
the windows along the front of the embassy with bullets, striking sparks and
screaming ricochets off the stately stone façade. “Duke, how are we doing?” he
said into the phone.
“Two white assholes down, sir,” reported Duke. “The guy in the mask ran
off. That must have been the nigger.”
“You and Tricia take perimeter, everybody else close around like we talked
about,” ordered Cardinale. The WPB team appeared on the embassy lawn in the
hot and muggy night, eerie figures in black, with weapons at the ready, cylindrical
helmets blinking green and yellow, looking alien indeed in the pale light from the
street lamps. One of the figures was walking slowly, leaning and cursing under his
breath. “Who’s that hurt?” demanded Cardinale.
“Me, sir,” said June Bug. “Took a couple on the vest, bashed the shit out of
my innards, but I’ll live.”
“You sure the other hostiles are all down? We don’t want to be interrupted.”
“Yes, sir, except for the nigger who ran like a bunny,” replied June Bug.
“One fool wasn’t wearing a vest, and I damn near cut him in half.”
Kanesha Knight and her CIA bodyguard, Arnold “Two Toes” Jefferson,
were moaning and beginning to crawl to their feet. Jefferson was clawing inside
his jacket for his gun. Cardinale walked over and zapped a laser beam through his
nappy head; the monkoid collapsed and Cardinale kicked the gun away into the
bushes. “Those things work, sir?” asked Williamson.
“Yeah, at close range,” said Cardinale. “Wouldn’t trust it much beyond forty
feet or so, and the beam is about the width of a pin, so you really have to hit a vital
spot. You ready, Bets?”
“Gimme a sec,” she said. She handed her submachine gun to Williamson,
and then pulled a thin latex mask out of her bra that she put on, another alien mask.
Kanesha Knight rose shakily to her knees, shaking her head to clear her vision
from the stun grenade. “Haul her ass up,” ordered Cardinale. “She needs to pay
attention to this.” Two of the Office ops stepped forward, grabbed Kanesha’s arms,
and jerked her to her feet like a drunken Oprah. Cardinale gave her a good slap on
her rubbery black jowls
“Okay,” said Betsy.
“Showtime,” said Cardinale. He drew an automotive flare from his back
pocket and popped it, then Betsy stepped in front of it. The stunned and disoriented
Kanesha Knight looked around, shaking her head trying to focus. She saw herself
surrounded by what appeared to be robots with blinking lights on their heads, and
an alien white woman with the face of an E.T. wearing some kind of toga or Greek
goddess outfit, who was outlined in a bright and shimmering light.
“Huh?” said Kanesha.
Betsy raised her arms. “Hearken unto me, Kanesha Knight. I am the Princess
Ha-Tonna, ruler of Alpha Centauri and emissary from the Quantum Lords of the
Galactic Council,” she intoned. “I bring you greetings from the Quantum Lords
and a communiqué of great importance to your world. The individual known
among men as Hunter Wallace is an evil being in the service of the Dark Potentates
of the Crab Nebula. He has been sent to this planet to sow conflict and suffering
among humankind, by starting a wicked and unnecessary war against the nation
you call the Northwest Republic. It is the will of the Quantum Lords that this war
must be prevented, and you, Kanesha Knight, must bear witness to all the world as
a messenger of peace and love and reconciliation. Go now, Kanesha Knight, bear
our witness to Planet Earth, and impart to all of humanity the universal gesture of
peace and perfect understanding.”
“Say whut?” said Kanesha.
“I give it to you now, Kanesha Knight!” Betsy lifted her thumbs to her ears,
extended her palms, and waved them. “In this sign shall you triumph, Kanesha
Knight! End communication.” Cardinale stepped forward and kicked Kanesha
brutally in the solar plexus, knocking her to the ground, then threw the flare up
onto the roof of the embassy.
“Alright, we’re outta here,” he told his crew. “Get to your E&E points,
dispose of the vehicles and gear like I told you, and work your way back over the
river by noon tomorrow. Let’s go.”
Back in the Dodge, Cardinale pulled off his alien mask, as did Betsy. “What
the hell was that universal gesture of peace and understanding crap?” he asked.
“That wasn’t in the script.”
“I just threw that in there,” said Betsy. “I want to see if I can make her give
herself monkey ears and flap them in public.”
***
Hunter Wallace was not a happy president when he arrived back in
Washington on Air Force One that night. Special Agent Lee Lyons met him at
Andrews Air Force Base and informed the president that five Secret Servicemen
were dead, four of them in the botched attempt on Kanesha Knight at the South
African embassy, and one more, Victor Chan, had been found dead in an alley off
L Street with a single small-caliber bullet in the back of his head, fired at close
range. “Chan was robbed,” said Lyons as they rode into the city in the presidential
motorcade. His rage at the loss of his men was barely under control. “His wallet,
his gun and his badge and his phone were gone, but I’m not buying it, sir. This was
some kind of professional hit; my guess is by the same crew that came to Kanesha
Knight’s rescue at the embassy later.”
“What the hell was Chan doing in the alley to begin with?” asked Wallace.
“He was checking up on FWOTUS—I mean your personal services
assistant, sir,” Lyons told him. “It was routine. She went out for supper and she
stopped in a notorious deadfall on L Street, Shel Silverstein’s Garden of Delights.”
“Yeah, I know it,” said Wallace. “I used to eat there a lot as a Congressman.
Great doner kebabs.”
“Kind of an odd coincidence, don’t you think, Mr. President?” asked Lyons.
“Ms. Halberstam drops off the grid for an hour, the man I send to check on her
ends up dead in a hit that reeks of a pro job, and then a few hours later we get this
fuckup on Massachusetts Avenue, with a full-armed squad of very proficient
gunmen rising up from the earth just in time to shoot our men all to hell, save the
target’s ass, and then disappear?”
“You think Georgia Halberstam tipped off somebody on the Knight
termination?” asked Wallace skeptically. “And how would she know about it? I
know what you’re thinking, Lee, but I don’t talk business with Georgia or any of
my PSAs, not before, during, or after. I’m not that stupid. You clock all her
movements around the White House every minute she’s there. Has she ever done
anything suspicious? Listened at the keyhole in the Situation Room? She’s never
even been down there, and her access card won’t let her into the Cabinet Room or
anywhere else important. Any hard grounds for suspicion, other than the fact that
she was born in Montana?”
“No, sir,” conceded Lyons sullenly.
“You handled her vetting. You find anything besides a lot of drunk and
stoned wild-child crap in school? Anything political or racial at all?”
“No, sir,” said Lyons.
“The existing system was designed to make sure that even if somebody ever
did slip a Mata Hari on me, she couldn’t learn anything important.”
“I know, sir,” said Lyons. “But I’ve got a job to do…”
“I know, Lee,” said Wallace. “Look, the fact is, I really like this girl, and I’d
like to get her to extend her contract. I’m not saying don’t do your job, just don’t
get sidetracked unless you have some real evidence against Georgia. Keep on the
Chan thing, by all means, but you know, it could be a simple street robbery after
all. A well-dressed man in an alley might present a tempting target for some
hufflepuff looking for money to buy a pack of smokes. I’m not downplaying the
loss of one of your guys, Lee, but this mess at the embassy is the important thing to
concentrate on. You say Jimbo survived?”
“He took the better part of valor, sir,” replied Lyons dryly.
“And so he should have done, or we’d have no fucking idea at all what
happened,” said Wallace. “What does Jimbo say happened?”
“He said he and his team were attacked by space aliens, Mr. President,” said
Lyons through tight lips.
“What?”
“He says they were robots with blinking lights on their heads, and he says he
also saw a female alien wearing a wedding dress,” Lyons informed him, deadpan.
“Kanesha Knight says the same thing. She says the female alien was a princess
from beyond the stars who gave her a message for planet Earth.”
“Holy mother of pearl!” muttered Wallace. “Do you think your men were
killed by E.T.s?”
“Bullshit!” said Lyons succinctly. “Space aliens don’t carry automatic
weapons and stun grenades. The FBI extracted nine-millimeter slugs from the
bodies that their ballistics lab says are from MP5s, not the ones our guys were
packing, so they didn’t shoot themselves. It’s true that three of the casualties were
killed by some kind of laser, but we’re working on weapons like that ourselves.”
“So who could pull something like this off?” asked Wallace.
“You never fought the NVA, Mr. President, or you’d know the answer to
that,” said Lyons. “I was a Federal Anti-Terrorist officer in Spokane for two years,
sir. The goots used to hit us like this every damned week. These motherfuckers
were WPB or CMI or some kind of special squad out of the NAR. They knew we
were hitting the Knight woman tonight, and they knew why, and they decided to
monkey-wrench us. They know about Operation Strikeout, and my guess is when
our military moves on the Republic, they’re going to be ready and waiting for us.”
“What rank were you in the FATPO, Lee?” asked President Wallace.
“I was a captain, sir. Two years in Spokane, and then I was in Portland with
Delmar Partman.”
“Not a general, then? Not qualified to advise the commander-in-chief on
strategy and other big-picture stuff?”
Lyons had finally had enough. “No, sir. Just a soldier who has fought these
men before. Just someone who can tell you from personal experience that if you
underestimate the Northmen, the United States will pay in more blood than you
can imagine.”
Wallace was silent for the remainder of the ride back into Washington.
Owing to the late hour of his retiring, President Hunter Wallace gave orders
that he was not to be awakened until nine a.m. on June 19, but at eight, his bedside
phone rang. He woke up and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he said groggily.
“It’s me,” said the voice of Angela Herrin. “Turn on CNN.”
“What?” asked Wallace. “Why?”
“That meshugah schvartzer Kanesha Knight!” screamed Herrin in rage.
“That shitskinned bitch! She’s on TV making a fool out of herself and fucking our
whole pooch right up the ass, God damn her! Turn on fucking CNN now!”
“Okay, okay.” He set the phone receiver down and fished around on his
nightstand for the television remote. Beside him, Georgia stirred sleepily.
“Morning, handsome,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Angela’s got her panties in a twist about something,” said Wallace
grumpily. “You seen the remote?”
“Don’t you remember what you were doing with it last night?” she giggled.
“Where did you put it? Hey, babe, I’d kind of like a cigarette. You mind?”
“What?” he asked. “Oh, yeah, sure.” He took a key off his nightstand,
reached over and unlocked the handcuffs behind Georgia’s back. She rubbed her
wrists and fished a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her purse on her own
nightstand, and lit one while Wallace groped around on the floor beside the bed.
He found the remote and clicked on CNN. He saw Kanesha Knight’s chocolate
face on the screen. She looked dazed, disheveled, and possibly drugged, her eyes
puffy and her normally exquisitely coiffed and straightened hairdo was frizzed out,
giving her a wild, Buckwheat look. The tag line read, “CIA Director Kanesha
Knight” and the kicker read, “Talks About Last Night’s Assassination Attempt.”
Her enunciation was even more clear and elegant than usual. “I have been
appointed by the Quantum Lords of the Galaxy to deliver the message of Princess
Ha-Tonna of Alpha Centauri, and I speak now to President Hunter Wallace. He
must immediately cease his plans to invade the Northwest Republic. Instead, we
must win the hearts and minds of the Northwest racists. We must approach with
the universal gesture of peace, reconciliation, and perfect knowledge.” Kanesha
Knight then held her thumbs up to her ears, opened her palms, and waved them.
She looked like she had monkey ears.
“Jesus Christ on a raft!” screamed Wallace in horror. He picked up the
phone. “Angela, what the fuck?”
“She checked herself out of the hospital, and she’s holding her little press
conference in the parking lot,”
“Well, do something!” Wallace demanded of his press secretary.
“I did,” snarled Angela. “I dragged Judge Weinberg out of bed and I got him
to sign an involuntary committal order on her, and I just faxed it over there. I’m
sending the U.S. Marshals to grab her and get her ass over to St. Elizabeth’s—oh,
okay, looks like the hospital got the committal order.” Wallace looked at the
screen. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency was now fleeing down a
row of parked cars, pursued by two burly young men wearing white coats. The
assembled media crews were pelting after them, and the picture was jumpy and
confused, but every now and then Kanesha turned and waggled her palms beside
her ears at her pursuers.
“Sweet Jesus!” moaned Wallace. “Now what?”
“The cat’s out of the bag, Hunter,” said Angela Herrin. “Call the Joint
Chiefs and tell them to initiate Operation Strikeout, right now! The Nazis have
been warned now, and we have to move fast!”
“Yeah, looks like we have no choice.” Wallace hung up and dialed the
phone. “This is the President of the United States,” he said to the Pentagon. “Track
down Admiral Brava and get him on the phone to me, now!”
“What’s up, babe?” asked Georgia, laying back on her pillows and dragging
on her cigarette. “That Knight woman sounds like she’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
What was she saying about invading the Northwest Republic?”
“Well, I suppose there’s no harm in mentioning it, since now everybody in
the whole goddamned world knows,” said Wallace in a sullen rage. “Unless you
already know because you’re a spy. Lee Lyons thinks you’re a spy for the
Northmen. Are you?”
Georgia gave a silvery laugh. “Yeah, I know, Agent Lyons is paranoid about
me because I’m from Montana. No, Hunter, I’m not a spy, and if I was, I wouldn’t
be a spy for the same bastards who broke up my family. I hate them. I explained
that to Lee, but he probably didn’t believe me. That’s cool. It’s his job to be
suspicious of everybody. Now France, them I might spy for, so I could go and live
in Paris afterwards.” The phone rang and Wallace picked it up.
“Admiral Brava?” he said. “You saw that lunacy with Kanesha on CNN?
Well, then, you know why I have to tell you to initiate Operation Strikeout right
now. What do I mean by right now? I mean five minutes ago. Yes, well, readjust
your damned schedules. Jesus Christ, man, it’s only two days early! Use computers
if it’s too hard for your clerks or whoever to do it in their heads! That’s what
they’re for. Yes, I know they’re not in position yet, which is why you have to get a
fucking move on and get them into position. So what if it’s in the daytime? The
planes will be thirty thousand feet in the air, and don’t give me that horse shit
about how the Nazis have got ray guns! Christ, man, you’re sounding as crazy as
Kanesha Knight with her aliens!”
While Hunter Wallace argued and expostulated and shouted at the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the phone, Georgia rolled over in bed, fished in her
purse for her cigarette pack, and came up with both the pack and her phone in her
hand. Shielding the phone from Wallace’s view with her bare back, she texted out
a message. Like all American girls, in her teenaged years Georgia had acquired the
skill and dexterity to enter long and complex text messages quickly and accurately,
and it stood her in good stead now. Hey, Talia, want to catch a late breakfast? I
feel like some green eggs and ham. Oh, sorry, you don’t eat ham, do you? Just the
green eggs for you, then.
Two minutes later Bob, who was sitting in an Arlington diner with Vinnie
Skins and Duke and Betsy, heard his Belladonna phone beep, and Betsy’s did the
same. They opened their phones. Cardinale looked up and saw Betsy staring at the
phone with tears welling from her eyes. “What is it?” he asked.
Bob held up his phone. “Green eggs and ham,” he said dismally.
Cardinale buried his face in his hands. “We’ve failed,” he said in an
exhausted voice. “This is what we were supposed to prevent. It’s why they call us
the War Prevention Bureau. It’s the whole reason we exist, and now we’ve failed!”
***
“He’s insane!” shouted Brava in the emergency meeting of the Joint Chiefs in
the bowels of the Pentagon. “How is it that somebody who can wrap those yeasaying leeches in Congress around his little finger can’t wrap his mind around the
basic facts of logistics? How is it that somebody that smart doesn’t grasp the fact
that real war is not a computer game, and that moving hundreds of thousands of
men, vehicles, aircraft, and all their equipment is not something that can be done
with the click of a function key?”
“Did the commander-in-chief give us an order or not?” said buzz-cut Marine
Corps Commandant Louis Battaglia. “If he gave us an order to move two days
early, then we move two days early. It’s that goddamned simple. It’s the Delmar
Partman way. It’s the Marine way.” Nobody bothered to remind the jarhead that
Partman had been defeated and killed while mutinying and disobeying an order
from his commander-in-chief.
“The first and second bomber groups are ready at Minot, and we can launch
the third and fourth groups directly from Wright-Patterson in Ohio within an hour,”
said Bellows from the Air Force.
“That’s the B-Fifty-Twos, right?” asked Brava.
“Check,” confirmed Bellows. “Third and fourth wings have already got their
ordnance payloads loaded on board, and they were just about to lift off for
dispersal to their forward fields at Buckley in Colorado and Campo Maldonado in
Aztec Nevada. It would be simple enough to have them make their first mission
runs over the NAR, sorry, the racist entity, and then return to those fields. Plus we
can hit them with the Tomahawks on a few hours’ notice.”
“What about the Stratofortresses’ fighter cover?” asked Brava.
“Not necessary,” said Bellows confidently. “The enemy don’t have any real
fighters except some jerry-rigged civilian jets that are no match for a Fifty-Two,
and I think the alien ray gun story is crap. It’s Nazi disinformation, is all. This will
be a milk run. A lot of milk runs.”
“Task Force Soaring Eagle is still off southern California,” said Brava.
“They can launch their planes and missiles from further out, I suppose, but it’s still
going to take some time to get them within optimum range of the enemy coastline
while still staying out of range of those damned Russian missile batteries on shore.
We calculated all our fuel and other requirements based on kickoff at oh-onehundred hours on June twenty-first, to make sure we hit the bastards in the dark for
psychological warfare purposes. General Scheisskopf?”
“The three main invasion columns are now in the process of coalescing in
eastern Montana, as Operation Blast Furnace transmogrifies into Operation
Strikeout, like Desert Shield did into Desert Storm,” Scheisskopf reported.
“Combined Group North was scheduled to begin crossing into Canada at twentytwo hundred hours tonight. We can speed things up, I suppose, although it will still
give the Jerries a lot more warning time than I’m happy with. But Battaglia is right.
An order from the commander-in-chief is an order. How about our gallant allies
from the Latin world?”
“I will telephone El Presidente as soon as we finish here and tell him we’re
moving early, and could he oblige us by moving up his country’s own assault from
the south?” said Brava with a scowl.
“And what reason will you give him?” asked Scheisskopf. “That our director
of Central Intelligence experienced a psychotic breakdown because an
assassination attempt scared her shitless, and she went on worldwide TV babbling
about messages from a princess from Alpha Centauri, and at the same time blabbed
out the secret of the most hush-hush American military operation since the
Normandy invasion? And that our commander-in-chief jumps whenever his press
secretary says frog?”
“I think the Jefe will know all that,” said Brava dryly. “They do get CNN in
Aztlan, you know.”
***
Hunter Wallace was not the only president who was awakened by an early
morning phone call, although it was only a bit early, since State President
Morehouse of the Northwest American Republic in Olympia usually got up at 6
a.m. anyway. He picked up his bedside phone. “Yes?” he said.
It was Frank Barrow, Minister of Security. “Red, I just heard from Charlie
Randall, who in turn just heard from our man in D.C., and he just heard from
Belladonna. It’s green eggs and ham, sir. They’re coming, two days early. Hunter
Wallace has scheduled a worldwide telecast for noon EDT, so we figure the first
bombers will be on their way in a couple of hours.”
“Thanks, Frank. Plan 17 is in effect as of now. Alert Doctor Cord and tell
him we need to prepare to hit them with Rotfungus, and tell John and Carter to
begin the reserve call-up.”
“Already done, sir,” said Barrow.
“Good. Can you track down Charlie and ask him to give me a call?”
“Will do, sir.” Barrow hung up. Morehouse got out of bed, pulled on his
robe, and walked down the hall in Longview House to one of the guest bedrooms.
His secretary, Ray Ridgeway’s daughter Annette, and her husband, one of his
aides-de-camp named Colonel Eric Sellars, were staying in the presidential
mansion to be close at hand when he needed them. Their children were already in
one of the designated safe areas for the families of top government and Party
people. This was not the matter of privilege it might have seemed; the Republic’s
leadership had to have their minds as clear and free of worry as possible, and the
Americans were notorious for victimizing and retaliating against the families of
those they hated. Morehouse knocked on their door. “Annette? Eric?” They opened
the door. Eric Sellars was in PT shorts, and Annette pulling on a nightgown.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” said the youthful colonel. During the War
of Independence, he and his wife had been teenaged NVA Volunteers with the
Party’s intelligence apparatus, the Third Section. [See The Brigade]
“Good morning, Eric.” Morehouse said. “Sorry to get you up so early, but it
looks like the Americans have jumped the gun on us. We need to get up to Fort
Lewis right away.”
“They’re coming?” asked Annette.
“The bombers are probably already in the air. Annette, I hate to ask, but
could you go to the kitchen and whip up some sandwiches real quick? We don’t
know when we’ll get a chance to eat.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Back in his own bedroom, Morehouse was pulling on his own clothes when
the phone rang. He answered it. “Hey, Charlie. Green eggs and ham, is it?”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” said the Australian.
“You got that from Belladonna?”
“Yes, sir,” said Randall.
“Is she all right? How exposed is she?” asked Morehouse.
“There was an incident last night. One of their goons was following her and
Cardinale had to take him out. I’ll give you a full report when I see you up at
Lewis. They may be onto her, but our lads pulled off a neat little hat trick last night
that I hope will distract them. Ever seen a CIA director lose her marbles on
worldwide telly?”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Morehouse.
“Turn on the news before you leave and check it out,” said Randall with a
chuckle. “I asked Cardinale about Belladonna and as of eight this morning eastern
time she was still in the presidential sack. He says she’s holding strong and
keeping her cool.”
“Tell Vince that the very second she looks to be in any danger, extract her
and get her and that baby somewhere safe,” said Morehouse. “We may be about to
lose everything, and maybe we can’t prevent that, but we can damned well prevent
those monsters from getting hold of at least one more white woman to torture and
degrade. I remember what they did to Cathy Frost.”
“So do I, sir,” said Randall.
***
At 0945 hours Rocky Mountain time, Major Edwin Browder of the United
States Air Force, and his fully armed and loaded B-52 Stratofortress bomber out of
Wright-Patterson AFB, became the first hostile American aircraft to cross into the
Northwest Republic’s airspace, somewhere over Deer Lodge Pass, Montana. They
were headed for Missoula along with the rest of Flight 95, a total of six B-52s
whose mission was to reduce the city to rubble with bunker-buster and incendiary
bombs. Specifically, they were to level the University of Montana and its
pioneering scientific research and development facility, where for the past twelve
years flocks of eggheads and science geeks and inventors had been working on all
kinds of projects, everything from studying the true biology and genetics of race,
which was forbidden everywhere else in the world, to allegedly making secret
weapons out of supposed extraterrestrial technology, if the CIA could be believed.
In an interesting bit of irony, their bombing run on UM would almost certainly
involve destroying or damaging the house on Daly Avenue where Georgia Myers
had lived as a child.
“ETA to target fourteen minutes,” said the navigator in Browder’s
headphones. “Any bogies or flak yet, sir?”
“Nothing at all,” laughed Browder. “What are these peckerwoods gonna do?
Catapult a grizzly bear at us? The few planes they have are prop jobs, for Christ’s
sake! Don’t worry, guys, the only thing we have to be concerned about is how
good the chow hall will be down at Buckley. We’ll drop our load and be there in
time for lunch.”
A strange blue light flickered up through the cloud cover, but the sun at
30,000 feet was so bright that Browder wasn’t even sure he had seen anything.
“What was that?” he asked his co-pilot.
“What was what, sir?” replied Captain Isfahani, an Iranian-American.
“Nothing,” replied Browder with a shrug. But then it came again, a thin
pencil of blue light that appeared and disappeared in front of him. “No, that! Did
you see it?”
“Sir, looks like we’ve got some kind of enemy radar tracking system locking
on to us,” said Isfahani, pointing to one of his instruments. “It may be anti-aircraft.
Should we launch…?
Then the aircraft was struck at the speed of light by a high-energy plasma
ray, energizing all the subatomic particles it came into contact with, be they air or
metal or human flesh, and channeling those particles all into a one-directional flow
along the line of the beam. It sheared off the port wing of the B-52 like scissors
cutting a sheet of paper in half. The overbalanced aircraft went into a spin at six
hundred miles per hour and plummeted toward the ground. The centrifugal force
caused the entire crew to black out, and so they were unconscious when the plane
hurtled into a mountainside in the Beaverhead Forest. Within forty seconds, all five
of the other B-52s were falling out of the sky in flames and pieces. Georgia’s
childhood home was safe for now.
***
At noon Eastern Daylight Time, President Hunter Wallace addressed the
nation from behind the desk in the Oval Office. He looked grim yet elegant in his
Armani suit. “My fellow Americans,” he said. “Almost eight years ago, you did me
the honor of electing me to the highest office in the land. You did so on the
strength of my promise to you that I would bend every effort of my being toward
the sublime goal of righting a cataclysmic error of history that has shattered our
beloved country and shaken the very roots of democracy. I refer to the loss of three
and a half states of this indivisible union of ours to a racist military dictatorship
controlled by a murderous criminal conspiracy…”
From the NAR command center at Fort Lewis, President Henry Morehouse
and the full Council of State were watching the address. Morehouse had a phone in
his hand. “Initiate Rotfungus,” he ordered. He set down the phone. “Right,
comrades, the upload has begun. I am told that this should take about ninety
seconds, and then we will know whether or not we have a chance to win this thing
on a level playing field.”
On the screen, President Wallace was droning on. “Throughout the entire
history of this country, we have had a problem with hatred. Racism and sexism and
homophobia have been the curse of American society. These evils have stained this
country’s past and they stain its present, but I have come here today, my fellow
Americans, to tell you that stain is about to be erased for all time. This morning I
gave the order to all branches of the United States military to…”
The screen froze. Hunter Wallace sat behind the desk, caught with his mouth
wide open, like a big-mouthed bass snared by a fishhook, and a soundtrack which
consisted of a barking little dog, possibly a Chihuahua, filled the room. “What the
hell is that?” asked Morehouse.
“It’s kind of a screen-saver for Rotfungus,” said Frank Barrow. “It tells us
that the virus is still active and functional. It also resolves for all time the question
of whether or not Doctor Joseph Cord has a sense of humor. He does, sort of. From
now on every time anybody on earth turns on their television set, unless they’re in
Russia or serviced by Russian satellites, or unless they have direct cable access,
they will see and hear Hunter Wallace barking at them. Since most cable services
rely on satellite feeds as well for various programming, that’s going to cut down
American television viewership considerably. The whole country will probably go
into withdrawal.”
“Any word on Bluelight, Bill?” asked Morehouse.
“The bad news is that it’s not one hundred percent effective,” reported Air
Marshal Basquine. “There were some unit malfunctions and our techs are
stretched, flying all over the eastern frontier trying to troubleshoot and debug them.
There were some bomb and missile strikes within the Republic in Spokane, Boise,
Kalispell, and some of the military targets. There have been a couple of dozen
casualties that we know of so far. The next bit of bad news is that the bombing
wave from the naval task force hasn’t hit the west coast yet.” Basquine took a deep
breath. “The good news is that the first wave of bombers took something on the
order of eighty per cent casualties, with over four hundred enemy aircraft down,
and a number of those who escaped did so because they panicked when they
realized their planes were going down all around them, and they simply dumped
their bombs, turned tail and ran. We think some of the hits around the east may not
be actual bombs or Cruises, but falling debris from the destroyed enemy aircraft,
and frankly, there’s not much we can do about that. Basically, Mr. President,
Bluelight works. We have broken American air power!”
Cheers and applause rang out in the room from the assembled ministers and
officers. “And it appears that Rotfungus has worked as well,” said Barrow with a
smile, nodding toward the television screen where Hunter Wallace still barked.
“Our own sky is no longer our enemy. The bastards are still coming, but this time
they’re going to have to fight us blind and on foot, hand-to-hand, man-to-man. And
whenever Americans try that, they lose.”
XIV. D-Day
th
(June 19 - 12 years, seven months, and 27 days after Longview)
“The great questions of the day are not decided by speeches and majority
votes, but by blood and iron.” – Otto von Bismarck
The air raid sirens went off in Missoula, Montana, at around nine forty-five
on the morning of June 19, but the civil defense radio and television had been
warning the citizens of the Republic for several hours beforehand that the longawaited American invasion was on its way. There was no panic. The streets were a
hive of orderly and purposeful activity as all but essential personnel evacuated the
city and went to their assigned military or civil defense posts or other SRPs, Secure
Retrenchment Positions, where they would hopefully be out of immediate danger
and they could not only survive, but keep NAR society functioning. The Northwest
Republic had been preparing not just its military, but its people for this event for
many years. Virtually every adult citizen had some kind of part to play in Plan 17.
The public call for reserve mobilization had gone out early that morning, but
many of the military reservists for Missoula County were already in uniform and
with their units in various places around the country. The call-up had in fact begun
months before, covertly and in small numbers, with selected reserve units being
activated on a variety of excuses for “special exercises,” firefighting, equipment
inspection or some other pretext, and then not sent home but kept on active duty.
A more extensive callup throughout the country had begun almost a week
before, but quietly and without public fanfare, the citizen soldiers being notified by
telephone and personal contact. Over the past three months, the NAR had managed
to mobilize almost a million men, get them under arms and into the field without
the Americans picking up on it, a testimony not only to the enemy’s lack of human
intelligence on the ground throughout the Republic, but also to the limitations of
satellite surveillance. Most of the Republic’s major weaponry, aircraft and
helicopters, artillery and tanks, and the few precious batteries of Russian-made
missiles the country had been able to afford to buy, had been dispersed and was
now in position. Large numbers of inflatable dummies and a lot of apparently
motiveless troop movement back and forth across the landscape had added to the
confusion of the American intelligence analysts, many of whom were negro or
Third World affirmative action employees who were poorly trained and had little
aptitude for the task. In cubicles in the Pentagon and at Langley, they peered at the
blurred satellite footage half the time without any idea what they were looking at.
The Americans were already beginning to trip over one solid and
inescapable biological fact: the races of Mankind are not in fact equal in cognitive
intelligence and reasoning capacity. White people really are the sharpest knives in
the drawer.
The University of Montana’s chancellor, Jason Stockdale, had reverted to
his reserve military rank of colonel on receiving his mobilization orders. He was
now on the staff the NDF’s Fourth Army, the force responsible for squaring off
with the American Combined Group South of army, marines, and air force that was
expected to cross the border within 48 hours. The Fourth Army was led by Major
General A. J. Drones, an NVA veteran who had been the commandant of the
Missoula Brigade during the War of Independence; it would not have seemed right
for Jason to outrank him. To the north, the Second Army under Major General
Zack Hatfield of Oregon Wild Bunch fame was covering the Flathead region of
Montana out of Kalispell, and preparing to confront the enemy’s Combined Group
Center, while the Third Army under SS General William Jackson was centered on
the Coeur d’Alene and Spokane areas, preparing to repel Group North coming
down from Canada. The First, Fifth, and Sixth Armies were deployed in Oregon
and Idaho, along the Republic’s southern borders with California and Nevada, to
deal with the Mexicans who would be invading the country from Aztlan. The
Seventh Army under General Conrad Baumgarten waited in the wings in
Wyoming, poised to launch an attack on the enemy’s left flank.
All of this looked very neat and logical on paper, as if the war was laid out
like some kind of board game, but this was not the case. In actual practice, it was
as the American general Scheisskopf had predicted: the invaders would not be
confronting one or two large concentrated forces that could be designated by flags
or pins on a map, but hundreds of smaller ones that would nip at their heels like a
pack of wolves chasing caribou.
Alone among the Northwest ground forces, the Special Service or SS was
formed into divisions. The regular army was based on the older formation of the
regiment, comprised of self-contained and self-supporting battalions, all of which
were now at full strength, or would be within a matter of days. Certain regular
regiments of professional soldiers, such as the International Brigades, which
consisted of such outfits as the German Panzer Grenadiers, the Scots Guards, the
Irish Guards and the French-speaking Régiment Charlemagne, etc. had no
reservists. They moved and fought with their three battalions only, all together in a
unit, small enough to move quickly and large enough to strike like a hammer. With
support personnel, a regiment of regulars only, sans reservists, mustered almost
two and a half thousand men apiece.
The headquarters column of each army consisted of a core force of between
twenty and twenty-five thousand men, most of them regulars. The headquarters
column was the hive, so to speak, while the battalions were the bees. All of the
strength was spread out over the landscape for miles, so never was there any huge
concentration of men and materièl for the Americans or the Mexicans to attack,
from the air or otherwise. Even had they maintained their satellite surveillance and
air superiority, the Americans would have found it difficult to inflict debilitating
casualty numbers on the NDF. The overwhelming number of NDF regiments of the
line were comprised of their three regular battalions and at least six or seven each
of reservists, on the average about 5500 to 6000 men per regiment. (Scheisskopf’s
estimations had been high, another example of poor U.S. intelligence combined
with WPB disinformation.) The battalions moved, billeted, and fought separately,
although often brigaded together into perfectly coordinated and highly trained
regimental strike forces.
Finally, like jokers in a deck of cards, there were the three élite Special
Service Divisions of twenty thousand or so men each—the Viking Division, the
Florian Geyer Division, and the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. The SS division of
handpicked men, each trained to the level of an American Green Beret and beyond,
was an army on its own, with their own armor, artillery, and air wings. Even the
Pentagon’s generals admitted (out of range of the president’s eavesdropping
devices) that the SS were arguably the finest infantry in the world, albeit so far
untested in full-scale battle. The three SS divisions were poised just outside
Spokane, Boise, and Eugene, with orders to change positions once the word came
down that Rotfungus had worked and the Zionists were blind in the sky. Indeed,
there would be major troop relocations all across the fronts, to render the
Americans’ last snapshot of the Northwest military dispositions invalid. The SS
divisions would act as floating reserves to be thrown in wherever there was a threat
that the line units might give way, or more likely, wherever a weak point detected
where a breakthrough could be made. The overall strategy of Plan 17 was indeed
similar to that of attacking wolves: vulnerable sections of the enemy would be cut
from the herd, run down and bled to death, and when the whole beast was
sufficiently weak, the SS would be sent in for the kill.
Just before the air raid sirens went off, Jason Stockdale was helping his wife
Jenny load up on buses her personal contingent of over one hundred small
children, ranging in age from five to eleven years, along with the support staff she
would need to keep them safe.
Jenny’s particular reserve formation was an adjunct of the Civil Guard called
the Emergency Family Protective Service, comprised almost entirely of women,
who had become known as Mama Bears. The EFPS was a formation created with
this very day in mind. Before Bluelight, when it was feared that the Republic
would have to stand the full might of the American bombers and missiles, it had
been decided that the nation’s greatest asset, its children, would not be sent down
into holes to huddle in fear in underground shelters while the bombs thundered
overhead, risking burial alive by American bunker-busters or asphyxiation in a
firestorm. There would be no Dresdens or Hamburgs in the Northwest. In addition,
the fact was that almost all the fathers and many of the mothers of the Republic’s
infinite growing brood of kids would be needed at the front or on various military
and war-related duties. The EFPS not only meant that the kids would be safer, but
the men in uniform who were fighting off the invaders could be more confident
that their kids were out of harm’s way and being looked after, in many cases by
their own mothers and relations, who had formed community and church groups
through EFPS for the evacuation and relocation of untold thousands of children.
The EFPS children would be dispersed in groups into the countryside, to
special locations and facilities built in forested areas under as much cover as
possible, and near small towns in more remote areas of the Northwest Republic.
Each of these camps was equipped with cabins, kitchens and sanitary facilities,
stockpiles of food and water, generators, medical supplies, a small infirmary, and
so on. There school could continue, the children could play and be fed and cared
for properly, and they would hopefully be traumatized as little as possible beyond
the separation from their parents. There were special crèche refuges for infants and
toddlers, but Jenny Stockdale’s group consisted of older kids who were pottytrained and of sufficient maturity to obey adult instruction, insofar as kids that age
ever did. Participation in the program was voluntary, but it was estimated that in
time of war almost half the young children in the NAR would be thus protected
from the near-certain American bombardment of the cities and larger towns. The
British and Germans had done largely the same thing with their own young during
World War Two.
Someone had once asked Jenny Stockdale if, after her experience as an NVA
guerilla during the War of Independence, she didn’t consider such babysitting duty
in a time of national crisis to be degrading, or at least something of a comedown.
Wouldn’t she rather be doing something more exciting and swashbuckling like her
exploits from the old days? She replied, “Not at all. The Fourteen Words say that
we must secure the existence of our people, which is what I did during the revolt,
and also a future for White children, which is what I will be doing when the
Americans come to try and take that future away.”
Now Jenny got onto the first bus and placed her Kalashnikov in the rack by
the driver’s seat, then got stood in the doorway and shouted, “All right, kids, let me
have your attention! We’ve all practiced in our after-school drills and our weekend
camp-outs for this, and now we have to do it for real. Sannie Van Reenen, when
the grownups are talking, you are doing what?”
“Listening, Mrs. Stockdale,” said the little girl.
“That’s right, so listen and don’t talk,” Jenny told her. “Now we are going to
get on the buses. Your counselors will assign you your seats, and you will not
leave them unless you need to use the toilet in the back of the bus, in which case
you will raise your hand and ask first. There will be no horsing around or general
monkeyshines on the bus. Remember, the counselors are bringing guns to use
against the Americans, but we also have a couple of paddles in our packs for any of
you who can’t behave yourselves. When we get to camp, you will collect your
evacuation bags that your parents made up for you from the luggage compartment,
and we will give you all your cabin and bunk assignments, and no switching or
messing around. Kids, I mean it—it is very, very important that your counselor
knows where you are at all times. I also want to remind you of the rule about no
touching or messing with any of the counselors’ guns or ammunition.”
“I can shoot an AK!” called one boy. “My dad taught me!”
“I’m sure he did, David, but you won’t need to shoot any of these. Now start
boarding your assigned buses. Miss Winwood, please make sure Mister
Christopher Benbow is seated where you can keep an eye on him and he can’t
pester any of the girls.”
“Yeah, Christopher’s gross!” yelled one of the girls.
“We’ll see how you feel about that in about eight years, Nicole,” said Jenny.
“Alright, everybody on the buses, quietly and in single file!” They began boarding,
herded by the counselors. The kids were not wearing their usual school uniforms,
but comfortable outdoor clothing and strong shoes provided by their parents. Jenny
got out of the doorway and stepped to Jason’s side.
“Well, it could be worse,” said Jason tightly. “They could have attacked in
the middle of winter.” All of a sudden the air raid sirens went off all across town,
the low wailing up and down that had been the signature theme of so much of the
past hundred years of glorious democracy. It was not a new sound to the children,
since the sirens were tested every Saturday at noon and they were all used to it.
Only a few of the older ones understood what the sound meant, and glanced
apprehensively at the sky. “Christ! I never thought we’d have to hear that sound in
this country!” hissed Jason. “Looks like the bastards are already on their way!”
“If so, then we need to be on our way too, Jace,” said Jenny, her face grim.
“I know, honey,” he said. “What’s that?” He shielded his eyes, looking at the
sky to the south. It was a sunny day, but for several minutes, there seemed to be
some kind of eerie light show far southward like lightning flickering in the
distance, with blue lines nipping into the sky and fireflies winking and blinking
high in the stratosphere. The Mama Bears continued shepherding their young
charges onto the bus, and in a matter of minutes, they were all seated.
“We better roll, Jace,” his wife said. Then all of a sudden, the sirens stopped
and there were three long honks, then three more, and then a final three. “What?”
she exclaimed. “The all-clear already?”
Jason’s phone bleeped and he opened it. He was hooked into the special
high-echelon command tweet. “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled!” he said with a grin of
joy and relief. “Looks like that new anti-aircraft weapons system we’ve heard
about works! Thirty-four planes and missiles headed for Missoula are now headed
for the dirt! Looks like out of their whole first wave targeting this area, not a single
one of the sons of bitches got through! Hot damn!”
“Oh, thank God!” said Jenny with a small sob. She looked up at Jason with
tears in her eyes. “Jace…”
“We’ve been here before, Jen,” he said softly, kissing her forehead.
“I know. And it was always hideous, back then too. Never knowing if this
was the last time.”
“We always met again, honey. We will this time, too,” he assured her.
“Sure,” she said with a wan smile. “But I thought the bad times were over
there for a while. I really did. I convinced myself that they would leave us alone.”
“They can’t do that,” said Jason. “Free white men are a flaw in the pattern
they cannot abide. Our very existence is an affront to them. It drives them insane.
We’re living proof that their way is wrong, wrong, wrong, and every day that our
society succeeds while theirs fails is another nail in history’s coffin for them. They
had to try this someday.”
“I know,” said his wife, her eyes hardening. “But I will never, ever forgive
those Zionist scum for making us go through this again!”
***
About five miles away, a group of around eighty men and boys in uniform
was assembling on the tarmac at the Missoula airport. Half of them were aging or
downright elderly men wearing NDF camouflage and collar tabs bearing the letter
B. The other half were kids and gangly teenaged youths wearing dark green
fatigues and garrison caps with green and blue neckerchiefs. This group included
several twelve and thirteen-year-olds. In front of them stood a chunky yet fitlooking man in his early sixties, with a shock of white hair. “All right, come on,
form up there!” he snapped at them. The two groups got into ranks. “Attention!”
Both groups snapped to a passable attention. “Stand at ease!” They did so. The
man spoke to them.
“For those of you kids who don’t know me, I am Sergeant First Class Eli
Horakova, Northwest Defense Force Category B Reserves. That’s us old farts. For
you old farts who don’t know these youngsters, this is C Troop of the Missoula
Battalion of the Young Pioneers. Their troop leader is my son Thomas.” He
pointed to 17-year-old Tommy standing in front of his troop. “Tommy just
graduated from Missoula High School a few weeks ago, and normally he would be
headed for the Labor Service and then on to basic training, but given the present
emergency he and the rest of his troop volunteered to become part of the NDF’s
Military Auxiliary Corps, otherwise known as the Cradle and the Grave.” There
was laughter. “For the record, we are now Company A of the Third Battalion,
Fourth Army MAC.”
Eli went on, “My other son Ed is with his own army unit down along the
Bitterroot someplace. My daughter, my daughter-in-law, and my grandchildren are
being evacuated by the EFPS as we speak. Our family fled to this country after
Longview with nothing but the clothing on our backs and with the Chicago cops
hot on our trail over a small matter of a dead nigger. We’re not going to run away
again, and neither will any of you, or I’ll shoot you myself.
“I know we’re not full-blown soldiers, although some of us have been in the
past, including some of our B-Specials who fought with the NDF during the
Consolidation, and more of us who were with the American imperial forces in the
Middle East. I myself did two tours in Iraq back in the day, and some of these older
guys have campaign ribbons from there and Afghanistan and Iran and Gaza. You
young men from the Pioneers, remember that. Some of us old guys got that way
because we made it through a couple of wars. Listen to us, because we know what
the hell we’re doing. You B-Specials, don’t be afraid to make use of the Pioneers’
youth and strength. We may not be over the hill, but we’re on the downward slope,
and we need to face that fact. Don’t any of you give yourselves a hernia or a heart
attack lifting something that’s too heavy for you or doing something you’re no
longer up to physically, because you want to play iron man in front of the
youngsters. Like any military unit, we have to work as a team. Everything we have
in the world depends on it. We will be assisting the NDF basically as gophers,
doing all the little odd jobs that need doing, here, out in the field, wherever they
send us. Everything from directing traffic, to KP and serving chow in the mess
tent, to running messages, to counting buttons and acting as supply clerks, to
driving ambulances or trucks, anything that will free up one more combat soldier
for the actual fighting itself.”
“Will we be issued weapons, Dad—I mean sergeant?” asked Tommy.
“Affirmative,” said Horakova. “Not Excaliburs like the line units, but MSixteens from the older stock the NDF has kept stashed away. They have tens of
thousands of them, and plenty of five point five-six ammo. Just because we’re
supposed to be support personnel doesn’t mean we may not have to fight. All of
you who aren’t Middle East vets from back in the bad old days have had at least
some training, either through the B-Cat course or the Pioneers, and all of you
should be familiar with the Sixteen. God knows, I remember it well. That’s what
we’re going to do now, get issued with weapons, magazines, ammo, and cleaning
kits. Then we spend the rest of today guarding the perimeter around the airport and
digging foxholes for shelter during the bombing attacks which are on their way,
although maybe not. I was just informed before I came out here that the first wave
of enemy bombers and guided missiles which was launched at Missoula has been
completely destroyed by some new kind of ray gun that our National Mad Scientist
Doctor Joe Cord came up with.” Cheers and rebel yells rang out along the tarmac
Eli went on: “When you’re out along the perimeter here, you will notice two
groups of vehicles, including some flatbeds with funny electronic gear on them,
things that look like satellite dishes and big movie projectors. That’s them. They
have been assigned to protect the airport against aerial attack, although so far they
haven’t been needed because our guys further south and east of here have already
stopped the enemy aircraft from reaching Missoula. Each of those units will have
NDF regulars assigned to guard them. Do not approach these vehicles, engage in
any conversation with their personnel, or ask any questions. These weapons are
still top secret, and as far as you are concerned, they do not exist. They’re just part
of the scenery. Are we clear on that?” There were some nods and mumbles of
agreement. “I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, sergeant!” shouted the men and boys.
“Good. Now we march over to Hangar Twelve like as if we were proper
soldiers, which we are, where we will be issued our own weapons. Company,
tenhut! Left face! Forward, march!”
***
At six p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, President Hunter Wallace, attended by
certain Cabinet and White House staff members, took his first official briefing
from the Joint Chiefs in the White House Situation Room. The mood was
somewhat less than ebullient. Bluntly put, the first day of the invasion had been a
disaster, and it wasn’t over yet. “The first thing I want to know is what the fuck
happened to our satellite communications?” snapped the president. “Why am I still
turning on CNN and finding nothing but a picture of me with my mouth open,
barking like a dog?”
“The enemy have uploaded some kind of computer virus onto the onboard
hard drives and telemetry systems of every one of our birds, and they’ve not only
knocked out our entire orbiting surveillance, they’ve wrecked almost the entire
world satellite communications network,” said Admiral Hector Brava. “Every
American and European orbital communications and ground surveillance satellite
is out of commission, and that barking dog shot of you is now the only thing on
hundreds of millions of television and computer screens from here to London and
Johannesburg. The only exception are the Russian satellites, whose orbitals appear
to still be functional. In view of their cozy relationship with the Northmen, that
comes as no surprise.”
“Mr. President, could we please establish some conversational protocols for
our meetings?” demanded an exasperated Janet Chalupiak, Secretary for Northwest
Recovery. “The use of the term Northwest American Republic is bad enough, since
it implies that we are dealing with some kind of actual country, but ‘Northmen’ is
just as bad, because it gives the impression that these people are a real nation. They
are not. They are a small group of racist, fascist and homophobic white male
sociopaths who have been engaging in a criminal conspiracy against the lawful
authority of the United States for the past seventeen years, and that’s all they are.
We must not allow them to control the narrative with this absurd notion that they
are a legitimate nation.”
“How about we just refer to them as those guys out there in the north woods
who are kicking our ass?” suggested Vice President Hugh Jenner. He had just
enough Oregon left in him to find Chalupiak’s patronizing political correctness and
insistence on controlling the narrative herself for them all to be irritating.
“With all due respect, Mr. Vice President, that’s a damned lie!” said Marine
Commandant Louis Battaglia. “United States Marines don’t get their asses kicked,
not by anyone.”
“I think the late Delmar Partman would disagree, general,” said Jenner
acerbically. “Wake up and smell the coffee, ladies and gentlemen. In under ten
hours we have lost almost four hundred American air crews and six hundred
aircraft, if we include Cruise missiles. We have inflicted only minimal damage on
the enemy. In fact, so far as we know, we have destroyed not a single designated
target. I fail to see how that can be spin-cycled into victory. We’re damned lucky
most cable TV is out, otherwise the talking heads would be crucifying us!”
“Wait until our boys get their boots on the ground, Mr. Vice President, and
then you’ll see,” said General Albert Scheisskopf.
“Speaking of which, do we have a single soldier inside the border of the
racist entity yet?” demanded President Wallace.
“Not yet, sir,” replied Admiral Brava. “Because of your—because of the
advancement of the schedule, it’s going to take a lot longer for the ground forces to
get where they’re going. More distance to cover on their Baghdad Boogie. Group
South was already in its staging area around Billings when you moved the mission
forward this morning, so they’re set to roll, but Group Center is way out of
position. They were supposed to start their push on Kalispell from the staging area
on the Belknap Indian Reservation, but now the cat is out of the bag thanks to our
lunatic CIA director, they have to begin their advance from Minot, North Dakota,
which will put them almost three days behind. Group North will be even further
behind, because they will be starting their northward flanking movement through
Canada from Fargo instead of from Minot.”
“But Group South is in position?” asked Wallace. “Great! At least one of the
columns will be on schedule! Order them to begin their attack right away, Brava!
We can spin that, can’t we, Angela?” he said, looking at his press secretary.
“Sure,” said Angela Herrin confidently. “Fog of war and all that. The other
two columns are a little behind schedule, but no biggie. We just tell them to step on
it. I mean, they’re going to be rolling down paved highways, not route-marching
over mountains.”
Brava and Scheisskopf looked at one another, appalled. Scheisskopf spoke
first. “Mr. President, we’re talking about armies numbering hundreds of thousands
of men and countless thousands of vehicles, not a vacation excursion in the family
RV! Troop movements on that scale are complex maneuvers that have to be
planned and organized like clockwork. But more than that, the whole crux of the
plan as far as the ground invasion goes is that all four columns, our three and the
Aztlan Mexicans, must strike together! We are going up against at least several
million men on the western and northern fronts, and we have to advance on them
simultaneously so that they can’t concentrate their forces on each column one by
one. Otherwise, without our air power, we risk defeat in detail!”
“Did you say ‘defeat,’ general?” snapped Wallace. “Now that is a word that
I will not hear in any conference or report again. Is that clear?”
“Speaking of the fourth column, how are our Mexican friends doing?” asked
Jenner hastily. “Have they crossed the border from California yet?”
“Not yet,” said General Scheisskopf. “They were caught even more off
guard by the abrupt move forward of D-Day than we were and they’re, uh, a bit
more slow off the mark than we are. I think most of their troops are still down
around Redding.”
Brava was staring at his laptop computer. “Not good,” he said. “I’ve just
gotten an e-mail from our military liaison in Aztlan, Brigadier General Batista. He
confirms that as of twenty minutes ago, V-3 Flying Bombs began falling on
Sacramento and San Francisco. Some of them were high explosive warheads and
have left impressive craters in the downtown areas of both cities, but others appear
to be chemical and biological weapons. There are already reports of civilian
casualties from what appears to be poison gas.”
“Where the hell are our Patriot missile batteries?” shouted Marlon Bagwell,
the Secretary of Defense. “We gave them to the Aztecs to reassure them that
wouldn’t happen!”
“The Patriots are firing and they have taken out a number of incoming V-3s
without difficulty,” said Brava, “But apparently, the North—excuse me, the racist
entity had a lot more of them than we gave them credit for. Bad intel again. Batista
says there are hundreds of the damned things coming at them. Not too surprising
since we figure a V-3 costs roughly half a million dollars to manufacture, whereas
one Patriot now runs about fifty million, what with the damned inflation driving up
costs by the month. The Patriots were designed to intercept and destroy
intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads coming out of the
stratosphere at supersonic speeds, not repel what amount to spitball attacks by lowflying junkheaps coming at them almost at ground level in mass waves like a cattle
stampede, and they simply can’t stop all the damned things. It takes time to reload
each Patriot missile into the launcher, and they’re simply overwhelmed.”
“A harbinger of things to come,” said Lieutenant General Frederick Selkirk
of the U.S. Air Force. “We’re going to have hundreds of those nasty little Nazi
torpedo boats coming at Task Force Soaring Eagle as well, thousands of those
propeller planes and attack copters coming at our ground troops, and hundreds of
battalion-sized units attacking our advancing troops.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen!” cried White House Chief of Staff Ronald
Schiff in alarm. “The bombing and Cruise missile strikes were supposed to take
out all their rocket launching platforms and their airfields and naval facilities with
the first few hours! What if they decide to attack Vancouver, Canada? There are
over a hundred thousand Jews living there, many of them Second Holocaust
survivors from Israel who are already terribly traumatized by the idea of rockets
falling on them!”
“Do we have any idea how the hell they managed to get to our planes and
missiles?” demanded Wallace.
“Apparently, some kind of laser or plasma ray weapon,” said Brava. “Not
many of our pilots came back from the first wave, but those who did saw
something that looked like beams of blue light coming up from the ground.
Probably why the enemy call it Bluelight.”
“Maybe Kanesha was right about the space aliens being on the Nazis’ side,”
muttered Schiff. “Maybe she’s not so crazy after all.”
“I rather doubt it, Ron,” said Wallace acidly. “What about the second
wave?” he asked Brava.
“We didn’t send in the second wave, of course,” said Brava. “I’ve also put
the seaborne assault from the carriers in Task Force Soaring Eagle on hold as well,
since we have no idea what we’re dealing with, and…”
“Son of a bitch!” shouted the President of the United States. “You mean we
haven’t actually lost control of the air war, we’re just conceding it because we took
a few losses?”
“Eighty percent casualties and over six hundred aircraft and missiles shot
down is not a few losses, sir!” said Air Force General Bellows sharply.
Wallace glared at him. “I’m no military man, but I know this country’s
military history. Even I can see that we’re sending the cream of the United States
Army and Marine Corps into combat against an enemy that outnumbers them by
possibly as much as ten to one, and if we do not establish complete control of the
air and start inflicting serious damage on the enemy’s strength and capability this
could turn into a nightmare! What about the parachute drops? Did you abort them
as well, Admiral Brava?”
“Sir, these things can take down B-52s, F-15s and F-22s five and a half
miles up, not to mention Cruise missiles, and some of those aircraft were traveling
at supersonic speeds!” protested Brava. “What the hell could they do to lumbering
C-130s and other transport planes and copters flying slow enough and low enough
to drop paratroopers? They’d be massacred!”
“So you’re sending three army groups in on the ground, blind in the sky and
with no way to even tell where the enemy are, to be massacred instead?” demanded
Wallace. “No, gentlemen, we have to turn their own trick on them. We have to
overwhelm these ray gun things with sheer force and numbers! We have to get
those bombs falling on their targets and get those paratrooper boots on the ground
seizing their objectives and holding them in the Nazis’ rear! We especially have to
start hitting their major industrial and population centers, even if only as retaliation
for their goddamned Flying Bombs on Frisco and Sacramento! And above all, we
have to get those satellites back on line, so we can see what the hell we’re doing
and what they’re doing, and get that goddamned picture of me barking like a crazy
mutt off people’s TV screens! What the hell do you think that does to our national
morale, never mind mine? Admiral Brava, you will now do three things. First, you
will immediately send orders for the second wave of bombing and missile missions
to take off and hit their objectives like they should have done hours ago. Secondly,
you will immediately order the planes from the navy carriers to take off and begin
their attacks on the urban areas and enemy infrastructure along the old I-Five
corridor, as they should have done hours ago. Finally, you will order the airborne
assault planes to take off and drop those paratroopers. We will get this show on the
road, dammit!”
“Sir, it’s the middle of June, the longest days of the year,” said Brava
desperately. “The sun doesn’t set out there until almost ten o’clock, midnight our
time, and that means the 101st Airborne, the 82nd Airborne and the 75th Rangers
will be dropping in daylight onto targets surrounded by large concentrations of
enemy troops who have not been softened up by so much as a single bomb, ready
and waiting for them on the ground! The Northmen, or whatever the hell Janet
wants to call them, will be able to see them all floating down, with the western sun
at their backs and mostly in the eyes of our own men. It will be a slaughterhouse!”
“Then get the second wave of bombers and Cruises in the air and soften
them up!” shouted Wallace. “Jesus Christ, man, I know I’m commander-in-chief,
but does that mean I have to micro-manage everything and tell you your job?”
“Night jump, Hector,” suggested Scheisskopf quietly. “Sir, with your
permission, we’ll hold off on the jumps until after dark, to give the second air
attack wave time to do whatever they can in the face of these ray gun weapons or
whatever they are. The darkness will shield our men from ground observation to a
large degree, and at least let most of them hit the dirt alive without their chutes
getting shredded in the air by small-arms fire.”
“Night drops are always hard, especially if the drop zone is blacked out, and
there’s always disorientation and more difficulty in re-assembling on the ground,”
pointed out General Battaglia.
“I know, Lou,” said Scheisskopf. “But better that than our boys drop right
into a hornet’s nest in full light.”
“Fine, send them in at night, then,” said Wallace. “In the meantime, we need
to bend every effort and put every technical geek we have working for the U.S.
government to work on finding some way to kill that damned virus and get our
satellites back up and running. It’s not just the military aspects we need. These
racist motherfuckers have screwed up civilian and commercial communications
throughout the entire industrialized world, except of course for the Russians. The
economic damage will be incalculable.” He looked over at Secretary of State
Modlin. “Dave, could you track down Ambassador Nichevsky, apologize for the
lateness of the hour and the suddenness of this request, but ask him to come and
see me at nine o’clock tonight?”
“Will do, sir,” said Modlin with a nod
“I’ll at least begin the process of bringing pressure on Big Bear to let us have
access to their own military surveillance satellites, which despite their denials are
mostly turned on us, I’m sure. Well, us and the Chinese border, but I’m sure they
have enough capacity to make up for our lost eyes in the sky, if we can persuade
them it’s in their interest to do so. No doubt they’ve cut some kind of deal with the
Northwest—sorry, Janet, the racist entity. We’re probably going to have to make
them a better offer and buy their help, the damned vodka-sodden pigs.” Wallace
looked at his watch. “Well, gentlemen, I have some things I need to take care of.
We will reconvene here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and by then I expect to
hear much better news about our progress.” Wallace got up, the rest of the people
around the table rose as well out of courtesy. Angela Herrin, Janet Chalupiak, and
Ronald Schiff followed the president out the door.
“What the hell does he have to take care of that’s more important than a war
we’re ten hours into and already losing?” wondered Brava aloud.
“Missed his seventh inning stretch,” said Secretary of Defense.
“The hell you say!” snapped Scheisskopf. “The situation on Operation
Strikeout is already critical, we’ve lost our satellite intel and a lot of our
communications as well, the Jerries have some kind of fucking Star Wars light
saber that’s sweeping our planes from the sky like a broom, he just tossed off a
couple of casual orders that will result in the death of thousands of American pilots
and soldiers when they hurtle headlong into an enemy of unknown numbers,
location, or capability, and he’s taking a slut break?”
“You obviously haven’t met the fetching Ms. Halberstam,” said Modlin with
a dirty leer.
Hunter Wallace was in bad mood, and so his session with Georgia in the
executive lounge off the Oval Office was more than usually kinetic. The president
had just stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist when his
personal phone beeped. He picked it up and glanced at it to see who was calling,
then opened it. “Yes, Dave?” He listened for a bit. “On his way? Good. I’ll see him
in the Oval Office in ten minutes, then. Is the Rooski bastard sober, could you
tell?” He listened again. “Okay, well, maybe it’s better if he isn’t. Tell
housekeeping to send up a bottle of our best vodka and put it on the sideboard.” He
closed the phone. “Hey, babe, I’ve got an ambassador I need to see in there and get
liquored up before I start twisting his arm. Would you mind going on up to the
residence and using the shower up there?” One of Wallace’s little oddities was that
outside of their multifarious deviate sexual acts, he was unfailingly courteous and
considerate to Georgia.
“Okay, sure,” said Georgia, easing herself painfully up off the sofa and
picking up her clothes. “Duty calls and all that.”
Wallace’s phone rang again, and he answered it. “Yes, Admiral? Good. How
soon will the paratroops follow the second wave? Yes, I understand, they have to
drop in after dark. All right, that’s good. I’m seeing Nichevsky now and I’ll check
in with you for a progress report in a couple of hours.”
When Georgia got up to the presidential bedroom and out of range of the inhouse spy cameras, she whipped out her phone and brought up Birdie’s latest
home-made program, one she had been given that morning in the Zombie Master’s
office. She quickly texted, Second bombing wave on the way. Paratroop drop to
follow after sunset Homeland time, don’t know where. HW meeting with Russian
ambassador now. She punched in a code number and a color photo of a white iron
garden table surrounded by greenery appeared. There were plates of food and a
large glass of iced tea on the table. The photo blinked and flickered as her text was
coded and inserted between the individual pixels of the image. Then she texted
again. Hi, Talia. Got to eat supper in the Rose Garden tonight. Fajitas from the
WH mess, yum yum! I stay with this gig too long I’m going to get faaaat!
Georgia hit send, and then went into the bathroom to clean up and shower.
The image went to Talia Halberstam, and was copied to Robert Campbell’s phone.
Campbell was at Birdie’s place in Arlington, where he loaded the image onto a
laptop and used a second program to decode the hidden message. He read it, swore
out loud, coded the information into another program, encrypted it and sent it off to
WPB headquarters in Olympia via a special uplink to a Lazarus Bird, one of the
American spy satellites that the Republic’s Technical Warfare Division had
hijacked and turned on its makers, and which was still operational. Within minutes,
the news was headed for the Northwest Defense Force General Staff, and thence to
the NDF military commanders in the field. Many of them knew that the airborne
troops were on their way before the officers of the 101st and 82nd themselves
received their orders from the Pentagon CENTCOM.
Another order to the NDF went along with the intelligence of the impending
airborne assault: “No prisoners.”
***
The sky over Wolf Creek, Montana was deep blue and melding into purple
as the sun finally set after the long June day; a few stars were now visible. HH
Battery of the Technical Warfare Department’s new Special Antiaircraft Weapons
regiment was set up on a hilltop overlooking the old Interstate 15, now known as
Border Highway. There were three short flatbed, half-tracked Mercedes trucks,
bearing blue, white and green roundels on their doors. Each truck carried a
Bluelight projector and the radar tracking and targeting system. Beside each
flatbed was a smaller truck carrying the alcohol-fueled generator that powered each
unit. Behind them were several more trucks used to transport the crews and
miscellaneous gear and spare parts. Deployed in the brush all around the Bluelight
weapons and crew was a full company of NDF riflemen and a battery of 75millimeter fieldpieces to guard the Bluelights and their crews and prevent their
capture; the Bluelight trucks themselves were equipped with explosive charges to
destroy the machines rather than let them fall into enemy hands.
“Bogies coming in at twenty-two thousand feet from the northeast, sir,”
called out the primary radar operator, Sergeant Marla Thompson. “Thirty miles out
and closing.”
“Firing positions!” called the battery commander, Captain Billy Ray
Downing. His crews jumped off the ground and out of their vehicles and
clambered up onto the flatbeds. Downing was a lean and weather-beaten Texan
from Amarillo who had done five years of a ten-year jolt in Huntsville for using a
forbidden racial word in public during a fender-bender traffic accident, before he
escaped and headed Northwest. “How many and how fast, sarge?”
“Ten of them in a cluster at mach two, sir. From the speed and individual
mass looks like Cruise missiles,” she called out. “Judging from their course I’d say
they’re headed for Missoula.”
“Charges?” called out Downing.
“Full bars here!” called out each of the three gunners behind their SAW
projectors.
“Lock on targets!” ordered Downing. “Take ‘em out in incoming sequence,
closest ones first.”
“They’re splitting up and taking what looks like evasive action, sir,” called
Sergeant Thompson.
“Probably detected our radar,” said Downing. “Distance?”
“Twenty miles and closing, sir.”
“Okay, boys and girls, wait for it. Give me a shout when they’re about six
miles out, sarge.” Downing lit a cigar and puffed on it for a while.
“Six miles, sir!” called out Thompson after a minute.
“Start zapping ‘em,” ordered Downing. Blue needles of light cut through the
sky. The plasma beams crackled again and again. Blossoms of flame appeared high
in the air to the northeast, and the rumble of explosions rolled down like far-off
thunder. “How are we doing, Marla?”
“Seven down!” called out Thompson. “Eight down! Nine!”
“Number one gun’s dry, sir,” called out one of the soldiers.
“Three’s dead as well, Captain!” called out another.
“One bogey still in the air, sir!” reported Thompson. “Almost overhead.”
“Lieutenant Farina? How’s your charge?” asked Downing, walking over to
one of the flatbeds.
“Two bars, sir,” said Farina raising his muzzle almost perpendicular to the
ground. “One more shot.”
“Make it count, son,” Downing told him. “That bogey might be the one
loaded with anthrax.” The projector crackled, the blue thread hissed upward, and a
bright light like a flashbulb exploded overhead. Cheers and rebel yells around from
the troops all around. “Good shooting, Lieutenant!” Downing picked up his radio.
“Elvis, this is Hound Dog One,” he said. “Got your ears on?”
“I’m right here, Captain,” called out the infantry company’s CO, trudging
out of the bush in full field gear. “Congratulations to you and your crews on an
outstanding performance.”
“Duly noted and appreciated, Captain Banks,” said Downing. “Those bad
birds may have been carrying bio-weapons or degraded uranium warheads, and
some of the crap may be coming down with them, so you’ll need to get your boys
to do some sweeps with their detectors. Most of any fallout will come down over
the road on their side, but the wind might blow it over into the Republic.”
“I’ll get my men on it,” said Banks. “You got our next bug-out?”
“A deserted ranch a couple of miles south of here,” said Downing. As a
precaution, the Bluelight batteries always changed positions after every firing
sequence. “CMI says their satellites are still down, but those bogeys may have
been tracked or alerted their bases to our position when they detected our radar.”
“I’ll start getting my guys packed up and ready to move,” said Banks.
“Any sign of movement over the road?” asked Downing, jerking his head to
the east.
“I sent a couple of patrols over, and all they saw was a few jack rabbits.
Other than that, not a soul stirring. We were at least expecting some Ranger
Recons to leg it over, but apparently that hasn’t happened yet.”
“The more fools they, then. We need to un-ass this area and get set up in the
new location ASAP, so we can get charged up,” said Downing. “Let’s hope the
Americans haven’t figured out yet that it takes almost an hour to fully recharge a
Bluelight projector.”
***
By dawn, the news began to trickle into the Pentagon War Room, and it was
unbelievably bad. The second wave of bombers and missiles on the eastern front
had been decimated, this time losing almost three hundred aircraft and as many
Tomahawks and Predator drones. The third wave from the aircraft carriers off the
Pacific coast was hit even worse; the Hornet and the Hillary Rodham Clinton had
not one single plane return to the ship. A few of the Stealth bombers had gotten
through and hit their targets, but even without further losses, American air strength
was now crippled for the rest of the war. Not only that, but large numbers of
people were now known to be keeling over and dying from phosgene gas
poisoning in the streets of Sacramento and San Francisco.
Details were sketchy, but the majority of the airborne assault troops sent to
secure rear positions behind the NAR lines and draw troops away from the main
invading columns died in the flaming C-130s that now littered the prairies, the
forests, and the mountainsides of the inland Northwest. The transports had tried to
evade the Bluelight projectors by coming in low, almost at treetop level, and by
zigzagging and other evasive maneuvers. But that had caused its own problems: at
least some of the Hercules transports had crashed into the ground due to pilot error
in the dark. Others had fallen to extensive ground fire from artillery, shoulder-fired
missiles, and small arms, and the closer they got to their designated targets, the
more likely they were to run into a Bluelight battery concealed in a gully or behind
a rise in the terrain.
Some of the paratroopers had indeed reached their drop zones, or
somewhere near their drop zones. The evasive maneuvers had confused navigation,
and in many cases, whole sticks of paratroops jumped and ended up falling into the
Douglas firs of the Northwest forests, or simply miles away from whatever road or
rail junction or small town they were supposed to occupy and hold. The scattered
NDF battalions all over the countryside homed in on the invaders wherever they hit
dirt, surrounded them, and killed them all. Sometimes companies or larger units of
Americans were able to seize a hill or small crossroads town and dig in a bit, but
the dawn brought NDF troops and tanks and the deadly 75-millimeter and selfpropelled 88-millimeter guns to blast apart whatever defenses they were able to
erect. By noon on June 20, every single unit of the 101st Airborne, the 82nd
Airborne, and the 75th Ranger Regiment were out of contact, and without satellite
surveillance the Pentagon had no idea where they were or what was happening.
The Northwest had swallowed them up.
“Jesus wept!” moaned Vice President Jenner. “Tens of thousands of
casualties on our side, and we haven’t even laid a glove on these racist
motherfuckers yet!”
A rumor went around that the distracted General Albert Scheisskopf was
wandering the corridors of the Pentagon, ranting and raving to himself, shouting
out, “Hunter Wallace, give me back my divisions!”
***
D-Day, 0800 hours June 19th – 0800 hours June 20th
NDF military casualties – 32 dead, 84 wounded
NAR civilian casualties – 27 dead, 112 wounded
United States military casualties – 4,677 dead. 2,940 wounded
United States civilian casualties – 212 dead, 811 wounded
Aztlan military casualties – 890 dead, 1,366 wounded
Aztlan civilian casualties - 7,598 dead, 13,000 wounded or gassed
XV. The Second Day
(D-Day plus one)
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
-Tennyson
“Have they crossed any of our borders yet?” asked President Red
Morehouse. It was late in the afternoon of June 20. Morehouse and his staff were
sitting in an air-conditioned mobile command vehicle pulled into a camouflaged
position just outside of North Bend, Washington, a converted 18-wheeler escorted
by a small convoy of heavily armed SS vehicles from the Leibstandarte Adolf
Hitler’s Presidential Unit, including a full Bluelight battery to intercept any
American Predator drone or other aerial assassination attempts.
The president was maintaining communication with his military
commanders and the rest of the nation through encrypted radio and cybercommunications, using a number of concealed underground fiber-optic lines
which had been laid over previous years, with terminals spaced all around the
Republic in anticipation of the present crisis. Morehouse was also keeping an eye
on the enemy through the Lazarus Birds, the dozen or so satellites that the NDF’s
Technical Warfare Division had skyjacked and converted to the Republic’s own
use prior to Operation Strikeout and Rotfungus. The whole mobile command post
concept was a throwback to the War of Independence when the NVA Army
Council had moved in separate and nomadic cells around the Northwest, directing
operations and generating propaganda, etc. Morehouse himself was a former
guerrilla leader, and he always opted for mobility over sheer numbers and
firepower. “I mean have any of the ground troops crossed our borders, other than
the paratroop drops?” he added.
“No, sir,” said Defense Minister Carter Wingfield, sitting across from the
president at a narrow table.
“How are we coming on those?”
“The last of them should be mopped up before dark, Mr. President,”
Wingfield told him. “They tried to dig in at a couple of places, but our field
artillery was able to blast them out before they had time to get too entrenched. It
was a damned good idea assigning every battalion its own cannons, and it’s paying
off. The paratroopers haven’t been able to hold on anywhere, and it looks like
what’s left of them are breaking up now into platoon-sized groups and trying to E
& E. Most of them seem to be heading for the border, possibly looking to hook up
with their own columns, but I doubt many of them will make it. There’s just too
many battalions of NDF scouring the countryside for them. The Americans not
only have our own troops all around them, but the local people are all over them as
well. Civilians are calling in enemy sightings to the NDF, and in a lot of cases
picking up their own weapons and firing on them. Those poor bastards dropped
into in a hornet’s nest. They must feel naked without their air cover.”
Annette Sellars was in uniform now, of semi-dress dark gray, wearing on her
shoulders and garrison cap the oak leaves of her reserve rank of major in the NDF,
as well as her own tricolored War of Independence ribbon. She looked up from her
computer screen. “Sir, Admiral Leach reports that Operation Sea Lion is ready to
roll. Weather reports indicate it will be cloudy in the north Pacific tonight, no
moonlight, and so he recommends launching the attack fleet at sunset.”
“He doesn’t want to give his vessels at least a few hours of daylight to get
into the combat zone?” asked Morehouse. “Some of those boats will be having to
get up there from as far south as Coos Bay and as far north as Whidbey.”
“No, sir, he wants to avoid possible spotting aircraft launched from the
enemy aircraft carriers. He’s staggering the departure times of each flotilla so they
can all rendezvous at around oh-two-hundred hours and attack in the dark.”
“All right, if Leach is good with it, tell him it’s a go,” said Morehouse with a
nod. “Carter, how’s the southern front looking?”
“Our Lazarus Birds are on the Mexicans like ugly on an ape. They’re
pouring up the old Interstate Five like ants, more a disorganized mob than an army,
with a smaller force heading up through Nevada on old Eighty, from which they
will presumably get onto old U.S. Ninety-Five, and try to enter eastern Oregon that
way. Air Marshal Basquine figures the best place to hit them is the mountainous
stretch between Yreka and Hornbrook, at dawn tomorrow, right before they enter
the Republic. The way they’re going, they’ll be all bunched and tangled up along
that twisty-turny road, in some places with nothing but sheer cliff on one side and
sheer drop on the other. The Songbirds and Starfighters should be able to rip ‘em
up pretty good. Not much cover or room for evasion on those mountainsides along
that stretch. The pilots have all been trained running simulation flights in similar
stretches of the highway on our side, for years now.”
“You forget all those goddamned Chinese copters and pilots,” said
Morehouse. “The Aztecs may be thick, but the Chinese aren’t, and they knew any
invasion force moving into the Northwest Republic up I-5 through the mountains
would be vulnerable as hell from the air. That’s why they brought in all those
gunships, to help out their beaner buddies and cover the main ground force from
the south. It’s going to be a bloody mess.”
“The Starfighter pilots have all been given crash training courses in copterfighting ever since we spotted those things coming in down at San Diego, Mr.
President,” said Wingfield. “We’ll have to hope it turns out to be some use. The
Nevada-Oregon column from Aztlan will be harder to impede. There’s a lot of flat
or rolling countryside out there, and the Mex will be able to spread their vehicles
out overland and make it harder for the Songbirds to hit them on the move. On the
upside, it’s damned near uninhabited down there, so there are fewer civilians to get
in the way and less collateral damage to worry about. We’ve got forward airfields
in the Crooked Creek Range and the Catlow Rim, but only about a hundred
aircraft, all told. We were just spread too thin to allocate more.”
Morehouse sighed. “I know. We’re light on ground troops in that sector as
well, but looks like Bobby Bells and his Sixth Army are going to have to close
with them and fight a long running battle. Most of that column of beaners will
probably get through into the Republic, but as you said, that’s mostly a lot of
empty space and we can afford a certain degree of strategic retreat there. It’s our
weakest area, and I’m surprised the Chinks didn’t spot it. The Aztecs must be
stopped from linking up with the Americans coming from the east and north.”
“DiBella will shred those greaseballs up into taco meat, sir!” growled
Annette Sellars fiercely.
“I have every confidence he will, Major,” replied the president with a smile.
“Carter, make sure Bells and all our field commanders understand that we just
want to take out their vehicles during first contact. That’s the main thing. Same as
with the Americans. We want all of these bastards walking through our country on
long, hot summer days carrying nice heavy packs and gear. Now, the Americans?”
“U.S. Combined Group North’s ETA on the border of the Republic at Sweet
Grass is in thirty-six hours, but we anticipate they won’t attempt to cross over until
they hit Idaho, so they can drive for Coeur d’Alene,” Wingfield reported. “Billy
Jackson is keeping his Third Army pulled back and in an extended line for miles
all along the Border. No concentrations. If and when the enemy cross over, the
NDF will engage in single and brigaded battalions, slow them down until we can
figure out whether it’s a feint or the real thing. If it looks like they’re going to
punch through to Coeur d’Alene or Spokane, we order a general engagement and
we throw in the Florian Geyers right at their headquarters element.”
“Especially Coeur d’Alene,” said Morehouse. “Our nation was born there
during the Sixteen Days. We don’t surrender our birthplace.”
“Of course not, Mr. President,” agreed Wingfield. “Otherwise, Jackson will
try for the old Cannae trick: fall back in the center and let both wings envelop the
enemy. That’s the same goal Hatfield and Drones will be trying for, although we
hope we can really hammer their Group South out of action with Baumgarten’s
northward attack from out of Wyoming on the enemy’s flank and rear. Then once
the southernmost American column is done for, the Seventh and Fourth Armies
link up with Zack Hatfield’s Second Army and turn the same trick on Group
Center, and take them out of action. Then they join up with Billy Jackson and
everybody lunges for Group North’s throat. That’s the theory, anyway.”
“Let’s see how the practice works out,” said Morehouse grimly. “Now the
bad news. Eric, what’s our air raid damage?”
Colonel Eric Sellars brought up a screen on his computer and looked it over.
“Frankly, sir, our biggest problem seems to be damage and casualties from falling
debris off demolished enemy aircraft, hitting houses in the towns and cities and
starting forest fires in the countryside. Eight Cruise missiles got through the
Bluelight batteries along the coast, sir, with two hits on Fort Lewis, three on
Seattle, and three on Portland. We lost a methane yard at Fort Lewis. There was a
big-ass explosion and at least fifty casualties, but that was the worst of it. We also
lost the base headquarters building and office complex, but that was so obvious a
target that we evacuated it, and there were only a few wounded.
“One Cruise came into Seattle on fire. Apparently, a Bluelight SAW hit it,
but didn’t bring it down. It went off course and crashed into the Queen Anne
neighborhood with several dozen civilian casualties, and the foundation of the
Space Needle may have been damaged and undermined. They may have been
trying to wipe out a famous Seattle landmark. The other two Seattle hits left craters
but no casualties. Three came into Portland in a group and about eight blocks of
downtown was pretty much leveled, but again due to the general evacuation,
casualties were low. There were also some bomb strikes from enemy aircraft, but
none on any significant targets. It looks like the American pilots panicked and just
dumped their payloads so they could turn tail and get the hell out of there, get away
from the Bluelight. No more air attacks reported for the past eight hours. I guess
they’re either getting the message, or else running out of planes and missiles. Sir,
you know how much terribly worse this could have been. Bluelight has worked!
We’ve broken American air power!”
“Praise God!” whispered Morehouse. “Is Rotfungus holding?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sellars. “TWD reports the Americans are frantically trying to
re-establish communications with the satellites, trying to find some kind of back
door around it, and they’re throwing every anti-virus software they’ve got up into
the sky, but Rotfungus has burned out all the comm circuits. The most skillful
hacker can’t wake the dead. Looks like their satellites are down for the duration.”
“Is my opposite number in the White House still barking like a dog?” asked
Morehouse with a chuckle.
“Affirmative, sir, and already a lot of American media are commenting on
it,” said Sellars with a grin. “Someone threw a package of dog biscuits over the
White House fence this morning.”
“They’ve lost their toys, their machines,” said Wingfield grimly. “Now the
world will see how tough they are as men. Or not.”
***
At seven o’clock that night, the sun was still fairly high in the sky over
Bannack, Montana. Bannack stood beside Grasshopper Creek, a tributary of the
Beaverhead River. Founded in the year 1862 by miners working a silver strike that
played out within a few years, Bannack had long been a ghost town under the
United States. But the Northwest Republic took the view that towns were for
people, not ghosts, so after Longview the new government had run in electric
power, installed sewers and a water treatment plant, patched up the old homes and
built new ones. Bannack was now home to around 2,000 townspeople, mostly
German immigrants who had come seeking the Wild West. They had found it in
Bannack. They wore their cowboy hats to evenings in the local beer garden, and
they called their local riflery clubs Schűtzbunde.
Eli’s son and Robert Campbell’s brother-in-law Edward Horakova, now
aged twenty-eight and the size and build of a short mountain, presently served as
gunnery sergeant in command of one of the 75-millimeter fieldpieces in the battery
attached to the Eighth Battalion of the 85th Infantry Regiment, Northwest Defense
Force. Their regimental badge on their left shoulders was a patch bearing the
numerals 8 and 5 on either side of a battle-axe. The first three battalions of the 85th
were regular soldiers, although many of them were now seconded and scattered
throughout the remaining nine battalions of reservists as officers and NCOs. Most
of the reservists came from the southern Montana area around Missoula,
Anaconda, and the NAR sector of Butte. They had trained extensively all across
this very terrain, the soil they knew they would be expected to defend when the
invasion came.
Unlike the battalion’s 88-millimeter guns, which were self-propelled and
mounted on half-tracked vehicles called Ground Hogs, the 75-millimeter guns
were drawn into action by powerful all-terrain four-by-fours called Heeps, since
their designers claimed that they combined the best characteristics of both the
Humvee and the Jeep, including an astounding 44 miles to the gallon across open
country, running on fuel alcohol manufactured in the Republic. The 75s were
modeled on the famous French model 1897 soixante-quinze of World War One,
and were of a similar general configuration. They were, however, much lighter
than their great-grandfathers from the Marne and Verdun, because their barrels
were cast from much superior modern steel, they were mounted on carriages with
light and supple pneumatic radial tires, and as many of the other parts as possible
were made from aluminum, hardened Bakelite, or even wood.
The 75s also fired much more powerful and versatile rounds than the older
version, starting with a high explosive shell using SuperSem, a hopped-up version
of Semtex. There was a magnesium anti-tank round that could burn through the
armor plating of any known American military vehicle. The third nasty tune in the
75’s repertoire was an anti-personnel flechette round with a shell made of
concentric layers of thin steel stripping that on impact would burst into thousands
of tiny fragments of shrapnel the size of buckshot: it was like hitting the enemy
with a giant shotgun blast. The 75s’ range was five miles, and a skilled gun crew
could fire 15 accurate and well-placed rounds per minute. The self-propelled 88s
were even bigger and meaner, their crews trained to fight running duels with tanks.
This was good country for it. Between the two of them, the Northwest artillery had
blasted from a distance what few airborne invaders had reached the ground alive
out of every position they had tried to hold. Absent their own artillery and above
all their own cannon and tank-hunting helicopter gunships, the American
paratroopers had been blown to pieces and then they were run down like rabbits.
The 85th was now rolling down a long road through a valley running by
Grasshopper Creek, throwing up a cloud of dry summer dust. They were headed
for the Border Highway, old Interstate 15, and it now looked like they would be the
first NDF line unit to make contact with the actual ground invasion. “We’re going
to write a little history today, boys,” their regimental commander Colonel Alfred
Packer had told them over their individual headphones. “Let’s make sure it reads
real good to the millions of school kids in this Republic of ours over the next
couple of hundred years. Remember, they’re gonna be tested on it.”
“Yes, sir!” shouted back almost the entire regiment of a little over six
thousand men.
Now the officers and men of the 85th heard their CO again in their ears.
“Choppers, this is Battleaxe. I’ve just been informed by the Fourth Army
Command that the enemy have crossed the Border Highway and are now on the
soil of our Homeland. This sector has been invaded by one division-sized
mechanized force about thirty thousand strong, which appears to have divided into
three columns, two of them turning north toward Dillon and one coming right for
us down the Valley Road, or what the Americans probably still designate as
Highway 278. So far as we know, the enemy is still blind in the sky, and so they
may not know that we are here. We’ll remedy that soon enough. Other NDF units
will take care of the two enemy columns heading for Dillon, but the one heading
for Bannack is ours. They’re not going to get there. Our Luftwaffe spotters are
keeping us advised of their position, and it looks like we’ll beat them to Black
Buffalo Bridge. That’s as far as they get. It’s show time, boys. Battalion COs meet
me on Channel Two.”
“Don’t the Zoggies have any air support at all?” asked Corporal Gunther
Eckhardt of Ed Horakova’s crew as the rolled down the road, their gun bumping
along behind them on its caisson. “You’d think we’d see a few copters by now.”
“I heard they’re actually bringing in their helicopters on the backs of big
flatbed trucks,” said Eddie. “Those new energy SAW weapons have scared the shit
out of them, and they’re hoarding their gunships like gold, scared to send them into
the air, which kind of defeats the whole fucking purpose of having them.” Eddie’s
speech was still the flat dialect of Chicago even after twelve years surrounded by
cowboys and European expats in Montana.
Colonel Alfred Packer shared his command Heep not only with his driver,
but with Technical Warfare Department Sergeant Joanna Sedley, who was sitting
in the back with a large laptop computer linked to a Lazarus Bird. She also had a
chat room opened with the Luftwaffe intelligence officer at a nearby forward
airfield. “Our guys are just using microlights to scout the Zoggies, Colonel,” she
reported to Packer. “No combat aircraft yet. But Major Glimco says they have a
whole squadron of twelve Songbirds revving up on the field, ready to go when you
call them in.”
“Outstanding!” said Packer. He hit the button on his commpack for Channel
Two. “Hatchet Men, this is Battleaxe,” he said to the majors commanding the
battalions. “Our ETA at the bridge is four minutes for the forward units.”
“Battleaxe, this is Hatchet Three,” said Major Wilkie Collins. “Do we take
the bridge, blow the bridge, or rig it to blow?”
“No, the local people will still need to use it when we’re done here,” Packer
told him. “Let the Zionists try to force it. That’s a good narrow kill zone, a
bottleneck, and we’ll stop it up by filling it with their dead. Okay, boys, here’s how
we roll. First, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Battalions will occupy the high ground on
the west side of Black Buffalo Bridge, along with all, repeat, all of the regimental
artillery. That’s our center. Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Twelfth Batts will move
south a distance of approximately two miles, where you will cross Grasshopper
Creek and move eastward in battle order for another three miles, detaching
companies at four to five hundred yard intervals, where they will sit tight for a
while, unless the enemy discovers them and attacks. Third, Ninth, Tenth, and
Eleventh Batts will do the same, only they will cross the Grasshopper two miles to
the north, then move three miles eastward, again detaching individual companies
as they move. Since the enemy are blind in the sky and we’re not, we should be
able to pull this off while maintaining an element of surprise, at least until we all
get across the creek.
“The enemy will almost certainly attempt to force the bridge and attack our
center. They are to be met with the entire force of our artillery when they do. When
they fail to break through in the valley and over the bridge, they will attempt to
flank the center’s position, and that’s where the two wings come in. When the
Americans try to get around us, they run into our right and left flanks on either side
of them. We put them in a straitjacket, hold them down so they can’t move, and
then we beat them to a bloody pulp.
“The guns will set up covered firing positions along the ridgeline at
approximately fifty-yard intervals or as close as you can get to it. We will hold
them on the east side of the Grasshopper while they pile up on the other side of the
bridge. If the enemy do not attempt an immediate flanking maneuver, then as soon
as the sun sets, the detached companies on both the right and left flanks across the
creek will move toward the enemy and engage them. Do not attempt to overrun
them, and do not allow yourselves to be overrun, either. Do not cross Valley Road
in either direction even if the opportunity offers. Night fighting is tricky, even with
infrared vision gear, and we don’t want our own guys running into each other and
firing on one another in the dark. If it looks like you may be surrounded or if there
are just too many of them, fall back, then circle back in and hit them again from
another angle. We don’t want any wild abandoned attacks against superior forces
and firepower here. We’re not going to wipe them out, not yet anyway. We’re
going to bleed them, pin them down, confuse and demoralize them, and above all,
we are going to destroy as much of their motorized transport as we can.
Concentrate on taking out their vehicles. Remember, Montana is a mighty big
place. We want them walking across it.”
Thirty minutes later, Brigadier General Herbert Smith of the United States
Army approached the Black Buffalo Bridge from the east. He brought with him the
nine thousand or so troops of the 4th Mechanized Infantry Brigade out of Fort
Leonard Wood, which had been assigned to occupy the town of Bannack, establish
a small military administration headed by one Captain Chaim Lipshitz of the Judge
Advocate General Corps to run the town, backed by a company of military police,
and then head north to re-unite with the two columns from the 36th Infantry
Division and 10th Mountain Division that composed their particular Combat
Operations Group of the United States Combined Military Force South.
The Pentagon’s war-gamers were wise to the wolf-and-caribou analogy.
They had spotted the danger of keeping their three invasion forces together in one
big huge mass and leaving the many smaller NDF units so much room to maneuver
and attack from all sides. In a last-minute change of tactics, they had modified the
grandiose “Baghdad Boogies” they had planned for all three of their armies, and
the Americans were now moving their forces into the Republic from each army
group using multiple detached units of anywhere from brigade to full division
strength, small enough to maneuver and move quickly, but hopefully large enough
to beat back attacks from the NDF. They were trying to duplicate the same
Cannae-like strategy in offense that the Northwesters were attempting in defense,
modeling their attack on Patton’s hedgerow-hopping advance through Italy and
France during the Second World War, a series of swift enveloping movements they
hoped to emulate almost a century later.
Brigadier General Herb Smith was a short and lean man with the traditional
buzz-cut that most West Pointers usually retained through their whole lives. His
old-style Iraq desert fatigues always seemed to be starched and to hold razor-sharp
creases, even in heat like this. Smith sat in his personal Humvee, pulled over to one
side of the road, watching his long column of troops rumble by in their trucks, their
Strykers, and their Bradley Fighting Vehicles. He held in his hand an ordinary field
radio, in lieu of his usual encrypted personal helmet phone communication device,
which was dependent on a satellite and which could now show him only a picture
of his commander-in-chief with his mouth open, barking like a dog. The voice of
Captain Jason Beard, U.S. Army Ranger Recon, crackled in his ear. “Foxtrot Five,
this is Romeo Echo Charlie. Forward lurps are in. They report Nazis ahead, sir.
Thousands of ‘em.”
“That’s what we came here for, Captain,” said Smith, nodding to his driver
to move out. His Humvee sped along the side of the road past the slow vehicles
filled with troops. Smith spoke into his radio. “Alpha Sierra Charlie, this is Foxtrot
Five. Tell our birds it’s time they quit hitchhiking on Daddy’s shoulders and spread
their wings. Get the gunships into the air, get them four or five clicks ahead of us,
and tell them to start blasting anything that moves wearing a goddamned Swastika.
It’s time we had some fucking air cover on this little excursion.”
It took the Americans some minutes to get their six Apache gunships
launched from the flatbed trucks which had been hauling them laboriously up hill
and down since the brigade had left Billings, but once they were in the air the
assault craft swooped toward the valley and the Black Buffalo Bridge across the
highway. They were met by a hail of small arms fire from thousands of weapons
and shoulder-fired missiles. Their own rockets and chain guns managed to inflict a
few NDF casualties and knock out one 75-millimeter gun and one self-propelled
88, but in a matter of two minutes, three of the six choppers were down and lying
in flaming heaps on the ground, and the others turned and ran.
It wasn’t only the Bluelight weapons that could bring copters down. Smith
himself ordered the retreat. He had no intention of stripping himself completely of
his aerial scouting capability.
Smith ordered his Ranger-filled Bradleys and his Strykers forward out of the
cover of the wooded hills to secure the small, nondescript concrete bridge he now
saw through his field glasses as he stood up in his Humvee. Many of his vehicles
were tracked, and they could easily ford the minor obstacle of Grasshopper Creek
on their own, and his engineers could throw temporary bridges across the small
stream with no difficulty. Technically speaking it wasn’t necessary to capture
Black Buffalo Bridge, but capturing a bridge with such a picturesque name had a
definite cachet to it. It sounded good: future vets swilling beer in bars and saying,
“I was with Herb Smith at Black Buffalo Bridge!” Besides, Smith’s Rangers were
armed with the new-fangled “corner guns” developed for use in the Middle East,
weapons that were in essence small grenade launchers that fired a timed and
calibrated charge slightly over the head or to one side or other of a concealed
enemy, burst in the air, and took him out with concussion and shrapnel even as he
remained behind his cover. They had been used in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and
Gaza with some success, although they were by no means the mighty terroristslaying miracle weapon claimed for them. Even in modern combat, the man behind
the weapon was more important than the weapon itself.
Finally, there was another sub rosa consideration: Smith had a schedule to
keep. His boss, General Albert Scheisskopf, had been very specific about that: all
American units had to keep to the schedule, lest it look bad to the president and the
media. Like so many American military adventures over the past century, this
wasn’t just a war, it was a made-for-TV movie, and the U.S. military’s masters
wanted to keep to the script with no ad-libbing allowed. Never mind anything the
enemy might have to say about it.
Four of the lead American Bradleys floored it on Smith’s orders, and they
headed for the bridge. They made it without drawing any hostile fire, rather to
Smith’s surprise. The Ranger platoon in the Bradleys leaped out of their armored
vehicles, seized the bridge, quickly checked it for explosives and found nothing.
They reported back to Smith that the bridge was clean. “Establish a perimeter and
hold it until our forward units reach you, Captain,” Smith told the Ranger officer.
“We’ll get you some help down there ASAP. Hey, maybe the Nazis are going to be
gents about this and let us stroll on across.”
Two Stryker assault vehicles crossed the bridge and assumed positions on
either side of the Valley Road, their weapons pointing to the faintly seen enemy
who seemed to be scuttling in and out among the scattered trees about five hundred
yards up the slope and along the road. “We be sittin’ ducks out here,” muttered
Sergeant Omar Little, one of the Stryker’s .50-caliber machine gunners, to his
comrade-in-arms, Specialist Leo “Hook” Chamblin, who sat behind the vehicle’s
40-millimeter grenade launcher. Chamblin was a former pimp from New Orleans
who had been offered the choice of three years in prison or three years RA. In real
life, Hunter Wallace’s much-vaunted new recruiting standards for the American
military were sometimes not quite so vauntable as all that.
“I see sumpin’ movin’ ober dere in dem muthafukkin’ trees,” said Specialist
Chamblin. He did indeed, and it was the last thing he ever saw. The entire First
Battalion of the NDF’s 85th Infantry Regiment opened fire on his black ass at a
distance of from two hundred to three hundred yards, concealed as they were in
quickly dug and camouflaged scrapes. A trained NDF company with all its men
and weapons could dig into almost any terrain and present not a single visible
target to a frontal observer within three minutes; when the Americans on the bridge
took up their position their eyes had been on the ridge line, and they had no idea
that there were hundreds of Northmen almost within spitting distance of them. The
bullets shredded Chamblin and Little into hamburger, while two AT shells from
75-millimeter cannon crashed into the Stryker and melted about half of the vehicle
down into a puddle of steel, along with the driver inside it.
***
The main infantry weapon carried by millions of Northwest Defense Force,
SS, and other NAR military during the Operation Strikeout campaign was the
Excalibur Model Three assault rifle, otherwise known as the X-3. The Republic’s
endless legion of gun nuts had spent the past twelve years almost coming to blows
over the design and specifications for the Northwest military’s workhorse weapon,
but finally they had produced the X-3.
In configuration, the weapon resembled the old Chinese SKS, but instead of
the archaic stripper clips, it fed from detachable and interchangeable 20-round or
sometimes 35-round curved magazines like an M-16 or AK-47. The SKS’s
attached bayonet had been dropped as a useless anachronism, over the screams of
countless military traditionalists, and the muzzle of the weapon was fitted with a
combined flash and sound suppressor. Like the SKS, the stock and grips were of
wood, a plentiful commodity in the Northwest Republic. The rifle was chambered
for standard NATO 7.62 X 51mm cartridges; it had an automatic fire selector
switch and could be used as a squad-level full-auto weapon if necessary. The
weapon was slightly lighter than the old SKS, weighing in at about seven pounds
eight ounces. Its effective range in the hands of a skilled marksman was 900 yards,
and in the Northwest Defense Force, every soldier was a skilled marksman. The
time and effort that the United States Army expended on politically correct Mickey
Mouse bullshit, the NDF spent on the rifle range and on squad and company-level
fire-and-maneuver courses.
Each NDF rifle company also had at least three Widowmakers, otherwise
known as the Squad Light Machine Gun or SLMG Model 5. This was a magazinefed machine gun on a Russian RPD frame, but a lot lighter to carry. The bipodmounted weapon was chambered for NATO 7.62 packed into 50-round curved
magazines or 100-round plastic drums, and so the enemy’s M-60 ammo fit it
nicely. It had a cyclic rate of fire somewhat slower than its parent weapon, only
600 rounds per minute, which allowed for better control and greater accuracy, and
it was considered effective up to 1200 yards. The best marksmen in each company
got to pack one of the two Lockhart rifles, the 7.62-millimeter M-21 that the
greatest sharpshooter from the War of Independence had actually carried himself,
or else a lighter and more accurate version of the Barrett M82 .50-caliber weapon
that many of the NVA snipers had used, known as the Big Bopper.
Add to this an assortment of rifle grenades, hand grenades, and other deadly
impedimenta in the hands of the individual NDF soldiers, throw in shellfire from
the sixty-odd fieldpieces attached to the 85th Infantry Regiment, and the Rangers
on Black Buffalo Bridge never knew what hit them. Their corner guns did them no
good. They were all dead and all of their vehicles were burning junk heaps before
the rest of the American vehicles winding down the Valley Road were even
halfway to the bridge. Then the shells started raining down on the rest of them.
***
As the shells and bullets began flying back and forth across Black Buffalo
Bridge in Montana, hundreds of miles away, another battle was in preparation, all
along the Pacific coast of the Northwest American Republic. Admiral David
“Bloody Dave” Leach of the Kriegsmarine was getting ready to lead his motley
fleet of coastal defense vessels out against a full-fledged U.S. Navy task force.
The Lazarus Birds had pinpointed the location of the American Task Force
Soaring Eagle, almost ninety miles west of the Columbia River Bar. The American
fleet’s commander, Vice Admiral Hiram Warner, had positioned his fleet that far
out so that his ships would receive plenty of warning of the approach of any hostile
attacking craft from the shore by sea or by air. While it was true that Rotfungus
still held the U.S. satellite surveillance system in its grip, Task Force Soaring Eagle
still had effective aerial surveillance in the form of over a dozen carrier and frigatebased helicopters that patrolled the seas as close to the Northwest coast as they
dared to come, looking for the Kriegsmarine’s ships.
Admiral Hiram Warner was not a happy camper. His naval task force had
failed in its primary mission of reducing the western industrial and population
heartland of the Northwest American Republic to rubble, and now almost all of the
carriers’ bomber and fighter-bomber aircraft were blasted shards of burned metal
littered up and down old Interstate Five, scattered among the Seattle and Portland
suburbs, and through the Olympic mountains. His vessels carried the usual
complements of U.S. Marines, and he was now bombarding the Pentagon with
requests to be allowed to send them and drafts of armed sailors ashore to seize the
towns of Astoria and Seaside. If for no other reason, Warner wanted to do this out
of revenge for the humiliating defeat that the Federal Anti-Terrorist Police
Organization and the United States Coast Guard had suffered at the hands of the
NVA at nearby Sunset Beach, Oregon almost exactly thirteen years before. [See
The Brigade.]
There is little room at sea for tactical maneuver or for any element of
surprise, since there is no cover to hide behind, and sonar and radar can always let
a navy ship know who and what is coming for dinner. During most of World War
Two and in the infrequent naval engagements since then, such as the Falklands
War of 1982, naval warfare had consisted almost entirely of aircraft versus surface
vessels, and very occasionally surface vessels against submarines or surface
vessels against shore batteries of missiles. The trick to winning at sea consisted of
locating one’s opponent through radar or satellite surveillance, and then slipping or
blasting past his anti-aircraft defenses with a missile such as an Exocet. Ships
fighting other ships on the open sea had been virtually unknown since the battle of
Jutland in 1916; even the mighty Bismarck had been sunk by torpedo bombers.
Naval strategists and tacticians simply didn’t think in those archaic terms anymore.
Yet this was Leach’s plan.
He really had little choice, because he had little to attack with. A blue water
navy was always one of the most expensive toys that any nation could indulge in,
and the Northwest American Republic could never afford the luxury. Instead, the
General Staff of the NDF had concentrated on quantity, combined with as much
quality as could be packed into small packages. They had produced a fleet of
small, light coastal defense vessels, including submarines, in order to prevent
coastal infiltration by small commando groups of hostiles from the Office of
Northwest Recovery or anywhere else, and especially to hamper and interdict any
attempt at a seaborne invasion. This wasn’t such an actual invasion, since the
Americans simply didn’t have enough combat troops to add a fourth prong, but a
large U.S. Navy task force could not and would not be allowed to sit off the
Republic’s coast and threaten white life and limb, even if it was true that almost all
of their aircraft carriers’ planes had been blown out of the sky like mosquitoes
flying into a bug-zapper.
The mainstay of the Kriegsmarine’s coastal defenses was the Torpedo
Assault Craft or TAC boat, a forty-two-foot vessel armed with three rocketpropelled torpedoes packing PBX warheads and a magnesium core that could burn
through a carrier’s outer bulkhead in less than a second. There was also a 20millimeter cannon and twin. 50-caliber belt-fed Browning machine guns on the
deck. The TAC boat rode low in the water and was hard to spot in the darkness or
in choppy seas. It was powered by a methane turbine engine, and it had retractable
hydrofoils that allowed it to make a torpedo run at speeds of up to 55 knots. Its
range was short; less than 400 miles round trip, and its armor was non-existent.
The TAC boat was all speed and punch, all engine and weaponry. It didn’t even
have any bunks for the four-man crew, just a couple of hooks to stretch out a
hammock between them when one man out of the four wanted to catch 40 winks.
No one would be sailing across the Pacific in one.
Then there were the MAC boats, Missile Assault Craft or “punchies.” These
were even smaller, lighter, and faster vessels of fiberglass that packed only one
Nova missile and a single .30-caliber Browning machine gun, which was mainly
there for morale purposes, to make the sailors feel a little less helpless once the
missile was gone. Their range was even shorter than that of the TACs, and
reaching the American task force would take them pretty much to their limit, but
all they were expected to do was to make one fanatical charge at an American
vessel, cut loose with the Nova and its polymerized magnesium warhead, and then
break off and head back to port. That is if they weren’t ripped to pieces and sunk
by the computer-controlled enemy chain guns, High Energy Laser (HEL) weapons,
and repeating cannon.
The sun was setting over the long rows of docks at the Hammond Naval
Station just south of Astoria, Oregon, as Admiral David Leach stepped on board
TAC-157, which had been specially fitted with communication and electronic gear
in the pilothouse to enable him to get an overview of the entire fleet action and
speak with his vessels’ captains. Leach wasn’t wearing his navy blue sea fatigues;
he had decided to affect his full dress uniform including his ceremonial sword for
this trip. His Fleet Operations Officer stood beside him on the dock. “Sir, I have to
ask again, does the State President know that you intend accompanying the fleet
into action personally?” asked Commander Alexander Krycek in a concerned
voice. “You’re the head of our whole navy!”
“I didn’t actually mention the matter, no, but Red knows me well enough to
understand that I will never send my men into a situation like this where I won’t go
myself,” replied Leach. “As to me being head of the navy, you might better put it
that I’m taking almost the whole damned navy with me on this lunatic expedition.
If I don’t make it back, you’ve got what’s left. Alex. I don’t have to tell you to
serve this country, this president, and these men with honor and ability, because I
know you will. That’s why you’re where you are. I’m leaving you all six
destroyers, twenty-five TACs here and up and down the coast, ten punchies, and
seven of the U-boats. Use them and whatever comes back from this run tonight
well.” Krycek knew it was pointless to argue further, and he saluted as Leach
stepped on board TAC-157.
Already on board was Leach’s personal adjutant, Lieutenant Commander
Lyle Waller. “Good evening, sir,” said Waller, saluting. “I believe you’ve met this
boat’s skipper before, Lieutenant Torrance?”
“On several occasions, yes,” said Leach, returning Torrance’s salute. “I’m
sorry to lumber you and your crew with my presence tonight, Lieutenant, since I
know you’d rather be fighting those Jew-loving pirates out there than baby-sitting
the big skipper, but unfortunately somebody had to draw the short straw.”
“It’s an honor to have you aboard and to have One-Five-Seven play a part in
history tonight, Admiral,” said Torrance in a firm, quiet voice. He gestured to three
men standing at attention behind him on the deck. “This is One-Five-Seven’s crew,
sir. My first mate is Petty Officer Jim Vance, this is Torpedoman Al Briggs, and
Seaman First Class Mike McCluskey.”
“Good to be sailing with you tonight, men,” said Leach. “All that gear set up
in the pilothouse? Sorry about the tight squeeze.”
“It’s all up and running,” said Waller.
“You remember all that techie stuff TWD taught you in case it goes down,
Lyle?” asked Leach.
“Yes, sir, I know, we decided against the extra weight of a technical
crewman,” said Waller. “Sure you wouldn’t have preferred to run the show from
one of the destroyers out of Bremerton? They at least have a proper galley.”
“We’re going to need the few destroyers we have for sub-hunting,” said
Leach. “There are two missile subs out there in that task force that we’re not going
to be able to do a damned thing about from a TAC boat or a punchie, so long as
they stay submerged. I don’t want them creeping into the Puget Sound and
launching a missile at point blank range that those Bluelight things may not be able
to stop. We know the Harriet Tubman and Jesse Jackson are equipped to fire
nuclear warheads. We have to find them and make sure they don’t.”
***
Eddie Horakova’s 75-millimeter field gun was dug into a small scraped-out
embrasure among some straggly pine trees, about eight hundred yards from the
Black Buffalo Bridge over Grasshopper Creek. The emplacement was shielded
from direct observation from the front by a small roll of terrain that was too minor
to be called a ridge, but provided a good solid shield of rock and earth against
ground fire.
The noise was incredible, like nothing any man there had ever experienced,
or any modern Tolstoy could have described in writing. The Northwest artillery
literally shook the ground, as did the incoming shells of the American tanks and
cannon, some of which had struck and destroyed NDF positions. An aid station had
been set up back behind the ridge, and medevac Heeps with red crosses were
crisscrossing the battlefield on the western side of Grasshopper Creek like angry
beetles, sometimes taking fire themselves and rolling over as they wrecked. The
thousands of small arms sounded like rain or hailstones rattling a tin roof that
encompassed the entire sky. Eddie looked up from his semi-covered position, and
before the sun went down completely he saw against the deepening blue sky a
strange gray or brown shimmering in the air, almost like aurora borealis. It took
him a while to realize that what he was looking at was a sheet of thousands of rifle
and machine gun bullets whipping through the air.
There were NDF gun emplacements off to his right and his left, and behind
him a self-propelled 88 had taken up a firing position on the crest of a hill, from
which the crew blasted away. “That crew’s pretty exposed, don’t you think,
Sarge?” asked Corporal Eckhart, jerking his head back towards the 88.
“See those guys hunkered down in the bushes off to the right and left?” said
Horakova, nodding. “They’re SAM teams. They’ve put that 88 up there as bait in
case the helicopters come back, offering them a nice juicy target to lure them
within range of the missiles.”
“What about enemy artillery?” asked Gunther.
“You’re a gunner, you ought to know how hard it is to hit a target right on a
ridge line,” said Eddie. “Your first shells almost always overshoot or fall short.
Those guys are counting on us to take out any American guns before they make the
range. Let’s make sure we do.” They already had done; in the first minutes at
Grasshopper Creek, General Herb Smith, the American commander, had
confidently sent forward his Abrams Tanks, his self-propelled M101 guns, and his
105-millimeter howitzers to try and cover his infantry from the deadly small arms
fire, so they could break through the Northmen’s center. So far, they had failed. It
seemed the Americans could no longer hide behind plates of thick armor any more
than they could hide in the sky.
The Americans had not only failed, but although the NDF men stretched out
along the ridge and now in the woods along either side of the 4th Mechanized
Brigade could not know the full extent of the damage, the enemy had been
clobbered by the flight of twelve Luftwaffe Songbird dive-bombers that had hit
them twenty minutes before. The Songbird was a twin-engined propeller-driven
plane slightly larger than the old German Stuka, but with a much tougher and more
flexible construction that allowed for far greater wind shear resistance, g-force
resistance and stress on the wings. They could land or take off on runways as short
as 800 feet, and they could come in on a bombing dive at a screaming 300 miles an
hour, drop a 250-pound SuperSem bomb down a chimney with pinpoint accuracy
given a properly trained and skilled pilot, and pull out on a dime fifty feet from the
ground. It was true that American F-15s or F-22s could have taken them out with
ease, but thanks to Bluelight, no such American aircraft were available. Although
dead slow by 21st century aviation standards, an airplane traveling at 300 miles per
hour is still quite hard to hit with ground fire, as the American troops were
discovering. The Songbirds had unloaded 24 250-pounders on the Americans,
scoring a hit with each one, and the winding Valley Road as it descended from the
hills toward the creek was now littered with burning Abrams tanks, artillery pieces,
and trucks, not to mention dead GIs. General Herb Smith surveyed the damage
done in the two-minute air raid up and down along the road with horror.
Ed Horakova and his crew relied for fire control on directions from the
Eighth Battalion’s forward observers, who were now lying in prone positions up
ahead studying the small valley with their specially calibrated binoculars, which
helped them to estimate distance. Eddie knew the head of the team personally,
Sergeant Joachim “Dago” Degenkolb, because in civilian life he was a technical
draftsman at the Northwest Steelcor tool and die plant where he and his father both
worked. “All right, she’s cooled off now,” decided Horakova. His gun had been
resting after the first 100 rounds fired for the mandated ten minutes in order to let
the barrel and the breech block cool down, and also so they could stock up on more
shells. A Ground Hog with a special suspension and shock absorbers had chugged
up during the break, and the crew had helped the truckers unload case after case of
75-millimeter combat shells, four rounds per case. These they then broke open, and
loaded the shells into their own side racks behind the cannon. The 75’s combat
rounds were lighter than the old World War One version, because in the interest of
less weight the cases were made of special hardened plastic, almost like big
shotgun shells. There had been a debate over weight versus reloadability versus the
amount of brass and steel necessary to use metal casings, and the General Staff had
finally compromised. Practice rounds for the artillery range were made of brass
and were reloadable, while the combat rounds were made of biodegradable plastic
and disposable, thus increasing mobility and reducing the workload of troops on
the battlefield who didn’t have the time or the transport to pick up and haul
thousands of empty shells back to the rear lines.
Horakova took off his fatigue shirt; even though it was almost dark, it was
still hot as an oven. He kept his garrison cap with the eagle and swastika on, and
over his ears the muffled headset that both contained his radio and muffled the
sound of the shells firing so as to keep him from going deaf. He slammed a shell
into the breech and got on his radio to Sergeant Degenkolb. “Fire control, this is
two-eight. We’re back up. Give us some niggers to shoot at.”
“Sounds good, two-eight,” came Degenkolb’s voice over the radio. “We’ve
got another self-propelled 101 coming out of the woods blasting. Two gun, lay on
at 34 degrees azimuth and four degrees left from your position, adjust three clicks
to the left, and give me a spotter round.”
“Thirty-four up, four left, click three left,” called out Horakova. Corporal
Eckhart made a few adjustments on the weapon’s battery-operated hydraulic
aiming system. The gun barrel moved slightly up and to the left.
“Up!” he shouted back.
“Fire!” ordered Horakova. The gun gave what sounded like a heavy thud
that vibrated through the ground to the crew, all of whom were wearing earplugs so
as not to be totally deafened. Horakova waited for a few second and said, “How’s
that, Dago?”
“Damn if you didn’t clip one of his treads off!” crowed Degenkolb. “Okay,
Eight Battery, all weapons, let’s finish this bastard off! Give me five rounds of
rapid fire from your present declensions, all of you!” The Eighth Battalion guns,
three 75s and two 88s, sent 25 shells downrange in a matter of a few seconds. They
were rewarded by a dull rolling thud that they could hear even over the noise of
battle. “Got him!” yelled Degenkolb into the microphone. “Nothing left but
burning scrap!”
From his observation post behind a large and now bullet-scarred spruce tree
further down the ridge, Colonel Alfred Packer got on his radio. “Okay, the sun’s
down. Right and left wings, are all battalions in position?”
“Affirmative, sir,” came a chorus of reassurances over the radio.
“Sergeant Sedley, can our bird still see anything over there, or is it too
dark?” asked Packer.
She shook her head, looking at her laptop. “The heat signatures from all the
weaponry have been obscuring everything for a while, sir, but—no, wait, sir, I can
see what looks like major heat moving to the south and north from the Valley
Road. The Americans may have decided to wait until dark to try and begin their
own flanking movement to get around us.”
“Yeah, well, they’re in for a surprise. They’re gonna find us waiting for
them in those woods and hills.” Packer got onto his radio. “Right and left wings,
looks like they’re coming to you. Move forward and engage.”
***
The inside of the pilothouse of TAC-157 was dark, with only the lights from
the instrumentation for illumination. The whole fleet was running dark through the
inky sea, with only two small running lights on the bow and stern of each vessel,
absolutely necessary to prevent collisions between the Kriegsmarine vessels in the
pitch-blackness of the moonless night. The sea was calm, which was a blessing
because it enabled the attacking fleet to stay together and stay on course. “We
couldn’t do this in January or March,” Lieutenant Torrance had commented once
during the trip. All around them the men in the pilothouse could see the firefly-like
running lights bobbing and occasionally dipping in the trough of a wave, and the
long, low gray shadows of the TAC boats themselves. TACs were deliberately
built low in the water, to keep their radar and gunnery profile as low as possible.
The MACs were bringing up the rear.
The Operation Sea Lion assault fleet had crossed the deadly Graveyard of
the Pacific, the Columbia Bar, with no difficulty due to their vessels’ shallow draft,
and was now about 45 miles out, halfway to the American fleet ahead of them,
moving toward the enemy at a fairly steady twelve knots. There were around 225
TAC boats, many of them newly rushed off the dry docks at Bremerton and
Portland in the past few months since the NAR had learned of the impending
American invasion, with green crews and barely any sea trials. There were almost
a hundred of the smaller MAC boats, some also with new crews.
Eight of the TAC vessels carried no torpedoes, but were specially equipped
with Bluelight projectors and SAW crews, a last minute innovation in an attempt to
prevent the fleet from being torn to pieces from the air. There had been no testing
because at the time, the American satellite surveillance system was still up and
running and the NAR didn’t want to give anything at all away about Bluelight.
Leach didn’t even know for sure if the seaborne projectors would fire.
At the same time, the fleet had departed to attack Task Force Soaring Eagle,
almost three dozen U-boats, small submarines roughly the size of their ancestors of
World War One, had departed from their pens at Newport, Hammond, and
Westport, and were now sailing southward towards the California coast. The
submarines were too slow and easy for the American destroyers to sink to engage
in open battle against the might of the U.S. Navy, but they could fulfill their
traditional role as commerce raiders and start taking out some of the great Chinese
container ships that kept Aztlan supplied with cheap manufactured goods of the
kind they could not make for themselves. A dozen of the larger U-boats were
headed even further south, to blockade the western approaches to the Panama
Canal and cut into container ships from China and India headed for ports on the
American east coast. Mighty Mart would soon be running low on unnecessary
plastic objects.
On the downside, after much consultation and mental anguish, Leach and
Basquine had decided not to risk any of the Luftwaffe’s precious jet fighterbombers on the American naval targets after all. The American ships’ computer
fire controlled chain guns and their variety of surface to air missiles would simply
render the whole exercise a pointless act of hara-kiri. There would be enough
sailors dying tonight in head-on attacks against the floating fortresses, without
adding the Republic’s few jet combat pilots as well.
“Third Squadron is in contact now, Admiral,” said Lieutenant Commander
Lyle Waller. “Commodore Dalen’s compliments, so forth and so on. They’re about
two miles off the port side.”
“They made good time from Newport,” commented Leach, drinking black
coffee from a thermos flask. “Tell them to fall in. We’ve all practiced this
maneuver on nights this dark and in worse weather, so they should be able to do it
nice and smooth.”
“They’ll have to cut loose their MACs,” said Waller. The TAC boats from
the more far-flung bases had towed the missile-launcher boats from their bases so
as to preserve the smaller vessels’ limited methane fuel tanks.
Lieutenant Torrance spoke up. “Still, Phase One has been accomplished
without a hitch, sir. We’ve managed to rendezvous over three hundred vessels, at
night, in pitch darkness. And no sign of the enemy.”
“Oh, they know we’re coming, Lieutenant,” said Leach grimly. “Or if they
don’t, they soon will. There are at least two AWACs planes on those carriers, and
unless Warner is a blithering idiot he’s kept one of them in the air at all times. Oh
yes, they know we’re coming.”
“ETA within striking zone of the enemy in about three hours, sir,” said
Lieutenant Commander Waller. The long lines of low gray shapes continued to
plow through the wine-dark seas, their methane engines rumbling into the deep.
On board the American flagship John F. Kennedy II, named after the carrier
that had been destroyed and sunk in the Bremerton Navy Yard by the NVA during
the War of Independence, Vice Admiral Hiram Warner listened to the report of his
AWACs radar plane with some concern. “Say again? How many?” he demanded.
“Over three hundred small vessels, sir,” came the voice of the AWACs pilot.
“Damnation!” muttered Warner. He turned to his XO, Captain Alvin Larsen,
and said, “That’s a lot of torpedo boats coming at our asses. How many F-14s and
F-18s have we got left, Al?”
“Four on this vessel, three on the Partman, five on Kitty Hawk,” said Larsen.
“If we had our full complement and they didn’t have those damned space alien ray
gun things, we could gobble them up like sharks.”
“Scramble our remaining planes and get them out there sinking as many of
those nasty little bastards as they can,” said Warner. “I hate to waste a fifty
million-dollar Sidewinder on what amounts to a glorified motor launch, but I don’t
want all three hundred of those things coming at us at once. Tell the pilots to use
depth-charged bombs as well as their missiles and strafing guns. Then once the
planes are launched, begin dispersal and evasion maneuvers for the task force.”
“We’re running from a bunch of cheap-ass little boats that should be hauling
tourist excursions across some bay, sir?” exclaimed Commander Rufus
Washington, a large, very black, very nappy-headed man who was Soaring Eagle’s
RSM--Required Senior Minority officer, who had to sign off on all decisions made
by the fleet commander and fleet executive officer.
“There are thirty-six vessels in this task force, Commander,” said Warner
patiently. He hadn’t gotten where he was in the United States’ service without
acquiring the delicate but vitally necessary art for all Caucasian personnel of
explaining himself slowly and clearly to bone-headed niggers and other minorities
who had the power to impede and negate his work. “We are outnumbered over ten
to one, by much smaller vessels, true, but each of which has at least one device on
board, be it a torpedo or missile, which is capable of inflicting serious damage on
our own ships and possibly sinking them, including the one we’re standing on now.
Evading a hostile enemy with the capability to destroy us in order to preserve the
command and save American lives hardly counts as cowardice.”
“What if the Nazis have those ray gun things on their torpedo boats now?”
asked Larsen.
“Then we damned sure run!” said Warner. “We keep underestimating these
people, like that stupid n…like General Rollins did at Sunset Beach,” he hastily
amended, remembering the presence of Washington. “I don’t care how it looks.
Three hundred of them on us all at once, they’re bound to sneak a few torpedoes
and missiles past us and get some hits. Our mission is done here; our aircraft went
out and most of them didn’t come back, and if those computer jockeys in the
Pentagon won’t let us go ashore with our Marines and Seals and a naval land force
and open a fourth front, then we’re useless. I’d rather have a hasty and undignified
exit on my record than the loss of an aircraft carrier.”
Almost twenty minutes later Lyle Waller looked up from his computer
screen on board TAC-157. “Bogies, sir, an even dozen of them, coming in low
over the water. Looks like an attack run.”
“Tell the SAW crews to…” began Leach.
“They already are, sir,” said Waller. Almost a full minute later thin pencils
of blue light zipped and flickered from here and there among the TAC boats.
Fireballs exploded on the horizon, one, two, three, four. Then the rest of the
American planes were on them, screaming over them in the moonless dark, chain
guns blazing and missile trails snaking downward. Firey flashes across the sea to
the horizon told of hits and detonating methane tanks, although not many, and
burning debris and hot metal from the demolished American aircraft rained down
into the water, throwing up hissing columns of steam. “Casualties, Mr. Waller?”
said Leach. A piece of burning airplane wing hurtled into the sea not twenty yards
from them and hurled a geyser of water across TAC-157’s deck.
“Four TACs and a punchy gone, looks like, sir,” said Waller after a while
listening to the radio. “A number of boats hit and damaged but still seaworthy. Our
vessels are searching the sea for survivors; hence the unavoidable use of
searchlights, but the enemy obviously knows we’re here anyway. The bogeys are
coming back around for another run.”
“I didn’t know the United States Navy employed kamikaze pilots,” said
Leach with a grin in the dark.
Again, the blue beams nipped upward and the fireballs exploded in the sky,
scattering burning and smashed metal and molten plastic all over the ocean. “No
direct hits on our vessels this time, Admiral,” said Waller after a while. “The last
three bogeys are heading for their roosts.”
“Too bad,” said Leach. “I’d hoped to make a clean sweep.”
***
General Herb Smith was decapitated by a shell fragment in the Black
Buffalo valley at about the same time Admiral Leach’s TAC boats were shooting
down nine of the last dozen of the U.S. Navy’s F-series fighter-bombers over the
Pacific, and from then on things deteriorated for the American 4th Mechanized
Infantry Brigade.
The battle for them to break out of the eastern end of the valley turned into a
long extended mess covering many square miles, as the Americans at first tried to
either overrun or outflank the 85th Regiment’s center, then finally realizing they
were on the short end of the stick, attempted to break contact and retreat back up
toward Dillon. Although the diminishing strength of the American 4th Brigade
didn’t know it, the other two brigades of their invasion corps, amounting to almost
20,000 men, were pinned down in the town of Dillon itself by the French-speaking
Régiment Charlemagne, the 43rd Infantry, and the 12th Panzer Regiment, aka the
Rhino Riders after their new tanks. The NDF artillery was in the process of laying
the entire town of Dillon, Montana flat, assisted by scouts and forward spotters
from the townspeople themselves, who without hesitation called in NDF shellfire
onto their own streets and homes rather than have those homes returned to the
United States of America.
Eddie Horakova and his 75-millimeter gun crew spent most of the night
firing on coordinates provided by their various forward spotters, almost never
knowing or seeing what they were firing at. They fired at longer and longer
intervals between, as the battle moved away into the woods and hills on the eastern
side of Grasshopper Creek. About dawn, the order came to stand down and give
their guns a thorough clean. By then the string of burning American tanks and
military vehicles, mixed with a few from the NDF, and the litter of dead bodies
from both sides extended around the eastern side of Black Buffalo Bridge in a
seven-mile arc. Some of the Americans escaped and evaded in small groups, and a
few made it back to their side of old Interstate 15, but from then on the 4th
Mechanized Brigade became known to American military history as the Lost
Column, a kind of Custer’s Last Stand that kicked off a disastrous war.
***
“There’s one thing we still apparently haven’t mastered any more than the
Americans have, Admiral,” said Lieutenant Torrance, at the wheel of TAC-157.
“What’s that, Lieutenant?” asked Leach.
“Meteorology, sir,” replied the TAC boat skipper. He pointed through the
front windscreen up at the sky. “Our weather reports still suck sometimes.”
Leach looked up and saw the clouds overhead breaking apart, and suddenly
the sea was flooded with bright light from a full moon. “Damn!” he swore.
“Damn is right!” replied Torrance tensely. “Look, sir!”
Ahead of them, the American fleet rose from the sea in the moonlight like
gray metal icebergs, or like skyscrapers in the case of the carriers that towered over
the tiny TAC boats. The Kriegsmarine had known they were approaching their
targets, of course, since their radar had told them, and Leach had wondered aloud
why the Americans, who must in turn have detected the Northwest boats on their
own radar, didn’t seem to be moving or attempting any evasive action.
But seeing the enemy ships all spread out before him under the moon, across
miles of ocean, the answer suddenly struck Leach. “Arrogance,” he breathed
incredulously. “Pure American hubris. Even after everything that has happened in
the Northwest since John Singer’s neighbors in Coeur d’Alene came to his aid with
weapons in their hands seventeen years ago; these stupid sons of bitches still don’t
get it. These men really believe that they are exceptional, that they are immune
from the laws of history and nature, and that we poor wee pale peasantry can’t ever
really harm them.”
“So let’s harm them, sir,” said Waller.
“Oh, do let’s,” said Leach. He picked up the radio mike and clicked a key
that put him in touch with every vessel in the fleet. “This is the Big Skipper, boys.
Operation Sea Lion, Phase Two commences now. This is the part where we send
every last one of these scurvy dogs to Davey Jones’ locker. Do it!”
Actually, Bloody Dave Leach was partially wrong about the American
hubris. Vice Admiral Hiram Warner, Commander Larsen, and most of the senior
officers in the American flotilla were not stupid men. They fully recognized that in
the 21st century a small boat was capable of carrying and using a weapons system
of sufficient power to sink a warship of any size, and that over three hundred such
small vessels attacking them at once was cause for concern.
Unfortunately for them, Commander Rufus Washington did not realize this.
Washington was a large black man who had always towered over everybody else,
including the skinny young computer geek whiteboys of his youth. He had the
mindset of a typical black bully: small and white meant weak and contemptible.
What had worked on the schoolyards of the expensive prep schools he had
attended under affirmative action quotas would obviously work in combat against
these racists, since Rufus Washington knew his whiteboys. The monkoid was
constitutionally incapable of understanding that there could even be such a thing as
a white man who was not afraid of him. He certainly had never met one. Plus he
was the Resident Senior Minority on board, with a personal line to the President of
the United States, quite literally, or at least to the Chief of Staff Ronald Schiff. A
line he had used some minutes before evasive maneuvers preparatory to a return to
Hawaii were to be implemented.
Just as the moon broke through the clouds, Admiral Warner was informed
by a female communications officer, “Sir, I have the President on the line for you.”
As Warner took the phone into his hands, he looked out across the sea and saw
hundreds of small dark shapes like a shoal of minnows moving towards his ships.
Moving fast. Then faster.
President Hunter Wallace’s voice was heavy with censure as he spoke from
the bedroom of the executive residence in the White House, with Georgia Myers
lying beside him, pretending to be asleep. “Admiral Warner, I have just been
informed by my chief of staff that Commander Washington has felt it his duty to
report that you are considering abandoning your position in the North Pacific for
no other reason than…”
“I’ll call you back,” said Warner, hanging up the radiophone on its cradle.
The ship’s sirens were braying the call for General Quarters. “Open up on them
with everything we’ve got!” roared Warner.
Then the first torpedo slammed into his flagship’s side.
***
The politicians in the American War Cabinet who met in the White House
situation room two days later were upbeat. They attempted to present the Battle of
the Columbia Bar as a qualified success, or at least a draw. “It’s true that our fleet
sustained some serious losses,” said Secretary of Defense Marcus Bagwell,
desperately trying to spin the battle into a kind of 21st century Midway. “But the
enemy losses were really tremendous. We estimate that we sank over a hundred of
their torpedo boats. Some of our own vessels that were hit were merely damaged
and are on their way back to Pearl Harbor, either under their own steam or else
being taken in tow.”
Admiral Hector Brava had the full casualty list in front of him, and he stood
up in his seat, thrusting the papers at Bagwell. “You … call … this … victory?” he
almost screamed at the Secretary of Defense. “Two carriers sunk, the Hornet and
the Hillary Clinton! Three other carriers badly damaged! They don’t think the JFK
II will make it to Pearl, they think she’s going to go under in a few hours! Three
frigates sunk! Seven destroyers sunk! The Jesse Jackson driven to the surface and
then rammed by one of those little fuckers, shot to shit with machine gun fire, the
conning tower blown off with a missile and now under tow, and probably going to
sink as well! The Harriet Tubman limping home on the surface, leaking at every
seam from depth charges off those damned little Nazi boats and a possible reactor
leak as well! Every other ship in the fleet without exception damaged! Damned
near all of the task force’s aircraft, including the helicopters and the AWACs, shot
down by those space alien death rays or whatever the fuck they are! Seven
thousand six hundred-odd American sailors and pilots dead, and all we did was
blow away a few little pissant torpedo boats with three and four man crews, using
missiles and weapons systems that cost a hundred times more to develop and
manufacture and install and operate than the stupid little shitboats cost the Nazis to
make! They’re probably turning out more of the goddamned things in their
shipyards now, like lollipops, shipyards that we haven’t yet touched with a single
bomb or Tomahawk! How in God’s name can you call this victory?” Brava roared.
Vice President Hugh Jenner had CNN on the big plasma screen. They were
now truly the Cable News Network again, since Rotfungus still had all the world’s
communications satellites in its grip. They had been able to reach about 50 percent
of their pre-D-Day audience capacity so far by using fiber-optic cable and good
old-fashioned broadcast television. The news was uniformly bad. The meeting was
interrupted while Jenner and the Cabinet members watched live in horror as the
stern of the John F. Kennedy II heeled over and disappeared beneath the blue
Pacific waters. They learned later that Vice Admiral Hiram Warner had supervised
the last crew evacuation into the lifeboats and then climbed back up to the bridge,
electing to go down with his ship, thus giving the U.S. Navy pretty much the last in
its long and proud history of legendary heroes.
Vice President Jenner cut away to Fox News, which was reporting that two
Nazi U-boats had infiltrated San Francisco Bay, surfaced in broad daylight, and
attacked the city. One had just finished shelling the crap out of several sections of
the Oakland docks with his 2.5-inch deck gun, setting fire to a propane tank farm
and several military warehouses at Carranza Barracks, formerly Oakland Army
Terminal. The second U-boat commander proceeded in a leisurely manner to fire
six torpedoes into ships tied up along the San Francisco piers, sinking two cruise
vessels and one blazing tanker ship in their moorings. Then he shelled the
Embarcadero for shits and giggles.
Jenner cut to MSNBC, and they saw an aerial view of the mountainous
twists of Interstate Five just past Yreka, where long columns of black smoke
mounting into the sky from the hundreds of burning vehicles. “The Mexicans
haven’t even crossed into the Emerald City yet,” the Vice President said
conversationally as Janet Chalupiak snorted in contempt. He switched channels
again. The MSNBC copter showed brief segments of whirling dogfights between
Luftwaffe Starfighters, the lightning-fast propeller-driven fighters-bombers with
the nitro-injected alcohol engines that could hit speeds of up to 400 mph, and the
Chinese Taipan helicopter gunships. Then the view shifted to a ground camera that
showed the MSNBC news copter itself falling out of the sky in flames, riddled
with Luftwaffe bullets.
“Those graphics are terrible,” said Angela Herrin decisively. “It’s unpatriotic
and giving aid and comfort to the enemy by making it look like they’re actual
soldiers who can defeat the United States military. They’re not, of course, but
perception is what counts. We have to put a stop to the bad graphics.”
“And here I thought we had to put a stop to the enemy,” said Admiral Brava.
Angela Herrin ignored him.
“I’ll call a meeting with major network heads as soon as I can get them all
down to the White House,” she went on. “I’ll borrow Jimbo Hadding and some of
his crew, in case I need some help persuading these media prima donnas who think
they know what the truth is to remember their duty to their country.”
“You know, Angela, you almost got sued last time you had Jimbo tune up a
reporter,” Schiff reminded her.
“But I didn’t,” said Herrin airily. “I had Agent Hadding tune up his lawyer
as well, and Bob’s your uncle. When did you know a reporter or an attorney who
could stand up to a little slapping around? Besides, we’re at war now and Hunter’s
got the War Powers Act. He can do whatever he wants, and so can I.”
“Speaking of which, where is our illustrious commander-in-chief?” asked
General Albert Scheisskopf dryly. “Ah, speak of the devil …” he said as Hunter
Wallace strolled in the door, the faithful, hulking and sullen Secret Service
bodyguard Hadding behind him. Wallace was in a good mood.
“Tell me some good news,” he commanded cheerfully. At that moment,
Marcus Bagwell’s private cell phone number rang. Unbeknownst to any of them,
the Zombie Master Dr. Shapira had obtained permission from Vinnie Skins to
attempt to implement the repeated post-hypnotic suggestions that he had been
implanting carefully in the mind of the Secretary of Defense for months. The
Master was calling now from an untraceable number. Bagwell answered his phone.
“Yes?” he said.
“Foghorn Leghorn,” said the Zombie Master into the phone.
Marcus Bagwell dropped the device, stood up, placed his hands in his
armpits, flapped his elbows, and ran from the room shouting “Buck buck buck buck
BU-GUUUUUUCK....!!” The President of the United States, the War Cabinet, and
the assembled Pentagon brass stared after him.
Vice President Jenner spoke. “I don’t think any of us expected that,” he said.
***
Casualty summary : 0800 hours June 20th – 0800 hours June 21st
NDF military casualties – 1,870 dead and 5,291 wounded
NAR civilian casualties – 418 dead and 1,907 wounded
United States military casualties – 37,412 dead and 8,630 wounded
United States civilian casualties – 20,226 dead and 12,348 wounded, gassed, or
ill from biowar agents
Aztlan military casualties – 45,445 dead, 17,275 wounded
Aztlan civilian casualties - 42,598 dead, unknown number wounded, gassed, or ill
from biowar agents
XVI. Tides and Hurricanes
(D-Day plus 12 days)
Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the
strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who
yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy
but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. – Winston Churchill
Over the next two weeks of the steamy D.C. summer the war in the
Northwest slowed to a crawl, while the United States government dithered, raged,
recriminated, and intrigued.
Military and civilian casualties mounted slowly and grimly for the embattled
Northwest Republic, but soared spectacularly for the United States and Aztlan.
American bombing and indeed all aerial missions over the Republic ceased, at least
until the U.S. Air Force could figure out how to deal with Bluelight. No solution
was forthcoming either to the loss of American air power nor the loss of satellite
surveillance; Rotfungus maintained its mysteries impenetrable in the face of efforts
by every computer wizard the federals could throw at it. “I knew that lunatic Cord
at Stanford,” explained one exasperated software engineer. “He gets his theoretical
insights from the Bible and astrology. We used to call him J.C., he thought it meant
Jesus Christ, and he took it as a compliment! He’s a fucking kook, so how could he
come up with something like this that nobody can crack?”
“Maybe he gets it from his Esteemed Senior Colleague,” replied a second
man from MIT who had also known Cord.
One of the more interesting conversations that Georgia Myers overheard
between the American president and his staff, and subsequently reported back to
Vinnie Skins and thence on to the NAR high command, concerned the apparent
inability of the United States government to replace the hundreds of aircraft, the
thousands of motorized vehicles, as well as the naval vessels which had been
destroyed by the NDF during the first two days of the war.
Put simply, the cupboard was bare. After a century of squandering the
greatest national treasure trove of wealth and resources in human history on
politically correct social experimentation, the United States of America was finally
plain old flat-out broke, and was led by people who were bloody stupid enough to
start a major war when the country was broke. Not a good combination. The U.S.
had already been put on final notice by the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, and by the world’s few remaining stable monetary systems: any more
“quantitative easing,” or printing of money by the Federal Reserve in order to pay
for the war would result in the complete blackballing and delegitimizing of the
battered American dollar and its removal from all internationally traded currencies
in London, Geneva, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Beijing, Tokyo, and wherever else
there was a stock market or financial futures exchange. The U.S. floated a special
war bond issue as they’d done in World War One and World War Two. The bonds
fell flat on their faces and were withdrawn after three days in sheer embarrassment.
Everyone knew that the promise of the United States government to repay wasn’t
worth a bucket of warm spit. No one wanted to buy, sell, or trade in toilet paper.
Rotfungus continued to cripple the American satellite surveillance systems,
although after the first week a massive effort on the part of the U.S. government,
what remained of NASA, and the worldwide communications and entertainment
industry who owned and operated many of the satellites, was able to re-route
almost 95 percent of the world’s electronic traffic through combinations of
broadcast or fiber optic cable. At least the image of Hunter Wallace yapping like a
Chihuahua was removed from most television and computer screens across the
globe. Wags found to be posting the now famous image to the internet or
broadcasting it were visited by gorilla-faced FBI and Homeland Security teams
comprised mostly of African-Americans and Samoans. The humorists were beaten
to a bloody pulp, their testicles crushed, and left screaming on the floor of their
homes, pour encourager les autres. The offenders’ computer equipment was
confiscated, as were all locatable assets in any bank accounts or money markets, as
a fine to help the war effort. Only a few such examples sufficed to make sure that
for the time being the President of the United States no longer barked at the moon,
at least on the internet.
The three American ground invasion columns had all come to grief. All
three ground to a halt just barely inside the borders of the Republic, because they
simply ran out of motorized transport. The NDF destroyed it all. The American C130 transport planes and helicopters didn’t dare take off. Their trucks, their tanks,
their Bradleys and Humvees were littered across hundreds of square miles of the
inland Northwest in various stages of dilapidation from artillery shells, Songbird
bombs, Starfighter rockets, and IEDs whipped up by Middle East veterans who had
learned the technique from Muslim guerrillas in half a dozen exotic lands.
The U.S. Combined Military Group South was stalled at Anaconda,
Montana, surrounded by A.J. Drones’ Fourth Army, including the 85th Infantry
Regiment, which in turn included Eddie Horakova’s battery of field guns. Colonel
Jason Stockdale made it a point to get down to Horakova’s current position every
day or so for a quick word to let him know that Stockdale had heard from his wife
Jenny, and that Eddie and Bob Campbell’s wives and children as well as Kevin and
Tammy Myers and their baby were safe. They were living in a rural safe camp by
the side of Crater Lake, Oregon, and they were all doing fine in the camp school
and having fun. The kids thought it was all a great game and adventure.
Group Center was dug in and besieged by Zack Hatfield’s Second Army at
Fairfield, Montana. Group North, which had attacked through Canada with the
connivance of the Canadian government, had only made it as far as Ponderay,
Idaho, before they were halted and enveloped by the Third Army and the Florian
Geyer SS Division, and forced to dig in. As Group North’s commanding officer,
U.S. Army Lieutenant General John R. “Jack” Falstaff, remarked bitterly to his
chief of staff, Colonel Justin Nym, while the shells crashed all around their dugout:
“Some asshole in the White House told those lickspittles in the media that this
would be World War Three on our side versus World War One on theirs. So why
the hell are we the ones who are now stuck in trenches?”
Along the southern front, the news for the Allies was even worse. The
NDF’s First Army along old Interstate 5, commanded by General John Corbett
Morgan from the border city of Medford, the Fifth Army of General Robert Gair
out of Klamath Falls, and the Sixth Army out of Burns, Oregon, commanded by
General Robert DiBella, had completely turned back the Mexican hordes in less
than a week, reducing them to a panic-stricken rout. Significantly, after the first
week of Bluelight and shoulder-fired SAMs and dueling with Luftwaffe
Starfighters in and out of the mountain passes, the Chinese withdrew the bulk of
their remaining combat helicopters southward out of the hot zones, lest they go
back to Beijing minus almost everything they’d brought and with nothing to show
for it. The Aztec generalissimo, Alfredo Galvez, made a flamboyant exit on June
30th by wrapping himself in the Mexican flag and blowing his own brains out as
the SS closed in on his command post.
Acting on orders from the General Staff, none of the three Northwest armies
posted on the Aztlan border had crossed into Aztec territory yet. Having driven the
enemy back, they would fight a holding action in the south while the more serious
American threat in the east and north was dealt with. Instead, the NDF all along the
southern front were hovering on the border, bombarding everything that moved on
the Spanish side, conducting lightning commando raids and air attacks, while
occasional V-3s still drifted lazily southward to drop a load of unpleasantness on
Frisco, Sacramento, or Fresno.
Aztlan had almost fallen apart; Third World countries just don’t have the
infrastructure to survive a major military catastrophe. Local officials and
government functionaries were no longer being paid and were turning predatory
from Sacramento on south, with Los Angeles street gangs and rural jefes
establishing themselves as Pancho Villa-style warlords throughout California. El
Presidente was rumored to spend his time lying around his great palace in Los
Angeles in his underwear, drunk and surrounded by naked prostitutes, while his
clerical staff attempted to run the country. The once vibrant city of San Francisco,
officially deeded by the Aztlan government to a huge “gay community” in
exchange for the largely white and Jewish perverts’ admitted technical, financial,
and administrative skills to keep the country running, had lost two thirds of its
population owing either to death from phosgene and sarin gas, or else through
flight away from the V-3s. The section of the white and Jewish entertainment
industry that had remained in Hollywood was fleeing from southern California by
private jet and yacht as order broke down completely and CNN showed their
mansions in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Carmel being sacked and plundered
by mobs of campesinos.
But the biggest military development in the past several weeks did not come
from any of the battlefields. It was the sudden gas and biowar attacks against
crowded U.S. population centers in Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Cincinnati,
Philadelphia, and St. Louis, when agents of the NAR released phosgene or sarin
gas into the public transportation systems and weaponized anthrax into certain
other target areas. Tens of thousands of people keeled over in subways, buses,
public assemblies and buildings.
The bulk of the victims of these carefully planned chemical and bio strikes
were non-whites, blacks who were doing nothing but cluttering up the landscape,
and assorted Third World peoples who had no business anywhere in North
America in any case. America’s ruling class, for all of a century of political
correctness, was still largely white and Jewish, and these had not been significantly
attacked yet in their enclaves along the east coast. But the psychological effect of
the covert ops attacks on the régime’s power elite was definite. Although for some
reason it hadn’t gone down yet, they understood that what could happen in New
Orleans or Philly could also happen in Georgetown or Manhattan or other Green
Zones such as American Houston, and it was clear that the American authorities
couldn’t do much to prevent it.
The political blowback of the United States’ increasingly obvious inability
to protect its own territory and its own citizens from enemy attack grew ominous.
The liberal and Jewish-controlled media screamed like banshees, railing at Hunter
Wallace and demanding protection against “Nazi genocide” and a “third
Holocaust.” (Jews didn’t like that term, maintaining that there had been only two
Holocausts and both belonged to them.) Frightened blacks, Hispanics, and other
Third Worlders were no longer willing to eat and drink and shoot up their assorted
government checks, remaining drunk and docile in their own neighborhoods. Like
any herd of animals, they got spooked when they sensed danger, and they
threatened to break out of their pens.
***
Needless to say the excitement of war and the stress of being combat
bureaucrats produced an increase in demand for illicit meat and tobacco products
among the Green Zone’s élite; Vinnie Skins and his suppliers and his runners were
working overtime, and not just on the spying end of their business. One day
Lieutenant Robert Campbell, aka Richie from Chicago, was sitting in the office in
the Arlington warehouse waiting for his car—he had one now—to be loaded up
with cigarettes and coolers full of all-beef burgers and chicken leg quarters, when
he asked the harried Vinnie Skins why there had been no chemical or biological
attacks as yet in the two major American cities without which the United States
could not function: New York City and Washington, D.C.? “I mean, it was
Operation Applesmash in New York and Operation Pigkill here that finally drove
the Americans to the Longview Conference,” Campbell pointed out.
“Yeah, I know,” Vinnie told him. “I was here for Pigkill. It’s what got me
this gig in the first place. As to why we haven’t cut the cheese here yet, well,
there’s a couple of reasons for that. First off, these two cities are the most targetrich places in Amurrica for us, just like they were for the Muslims back in the day.
D.C. and Jew York have always been where Amurrica does its really important
business. Los Angeles used to be a third place, when the movie and entertainment
industry was still there, and that’s why we staged Operation We Are Not Amused
back all those years ago. [See The Brigade.] But that also means that D.C. and
New York have always been the most securely monitored, patrolled, and lockeddown places in the whole country. You know the kind of surveillance we have to
put up with over in the Green Zone, and it’s the same in the more crucial parts of
New York City, especially in Manhattan and the fortified towns in the Hamptons,
where every crack in the sidewalk has a security camera trained on it, not to
mention various goon squads always within a couple of minutes’ response time.
That means that it’s damned risky for us to make a move under the best of
circumstances, and with the heightened wartime alert level it’s even harder for us
to gain access to the kind of targets that would make a strike worth it, plant
whatever packages need to be planted, and then E&E successfully.”
“That night tickle you guys pulled off outside the South African Embassy a
few weeks ago went off seamlessly,” remarked Bob.
“Yeah, well, we were lucky, and I wouldn’t have tried that cowboy shit
except in really urgent circumstances,” Cardinale told him. “Our personnel
resources Out Here have always been limited, even when things were more or less
peaceful and we were operating under cover. The more people you have involved
in any kind of covert op, the more that can go wrong. But now that the lid has
blown off and the régime here has gone into full-blown paranoia mode, it’s going
to be even harder for us to escape detection. In fact, I’m thinking of closing this
warehouse down. It’s too well known, and some asshole over there at the FBI
might get the idea of cracking down on organized crime as part of doing their bit
for the war effort or some such crap.
“Secondly, strikes in the Green Zone here and the high end of Manhattan
will produce a lot more in the way of white casualties than what we’ve been doing
so far,” Cardinale continued. “We’ve been preparing for this day for years, of
course, and we have some plans we’re working on right now which we’ll roll on
when we get the word, but even here and now with the situation like it is, we’re
under orders to try and keep white casualties as low as possible. Whites are a
minority in the U.S. now, but even so, a lot of the individuals we gas on the Metro
or blow up in their office buildings are going to be ordinary white people, folks
who are working for the government just to try and get a paycheck and raise a
family and keep some kind of decent home.”
“Then they should be doing it in the Homeland!” said Campbell angrily.
“That’s what the Republic is for!”
“Nice ideological answer, but in real life things aren’t all that cut and dried,”
said Cardinale. “It’s like the whites who fought against us during the war, the first
war I suppose I should say now. There is still such a thing as an average American,
God help the poor dumb bastards. A lot of them aren’t bad people in themselves;
they’re just idiots who seem to have some weird fucking blindness hard-wired into
their brains, so they can’t see what’s going on around them. They just don’t know
any better than to believe whatever horseshit the goddamned United States and the
Jew liberal media tell them. They’ve never been allowed to hear any other point of
view, they have been told we’re monsters in human form, and they’ve never
questioned any of it. They never had the mental and moral equipment to question
any of it, because this filthy system made sure they didn’t. It’s all very well to say,
‘Well, they should have been smart and figured it all out on instinct like the first
Northwest Volunteers did,’ but they didn’t. Their brains have been dulled, but
they’re not evil, and they don’t deserve to die just for being dummocks whose
minds are more on their kids or paying their bills or their other immediate
concerns, than on trying to figure out what makes the world they live in tick. Most
people simply aren’t that complex and analytical. Not everybody can be a George
Lincoln Rockwell or a William Gayley Simpson.
“Anyway, even if these people may be a write-off, what about their
children?” asked Cardinale. “They’re part of our racial gene pool too, and there
aren’t enough of us left on this planet so we can write them off, or any other group
of white people. Do we want another whole generation of white children to grow
up hating and fearing so-called Nazis, hating the Northwest Republic because their
father or mother died in a bombing of a government office or a gassing on a
subway platform?”
“Yet President Morehouse has ordered that no prisoners from the invading
armies be taken,” pointed out Campbell.
“That’s different,” said Cardinale, shaking his head. “Those are soldiers who
joined the American military voluntarily, in search of a paycheck, and also for the
last medical insurance and retirement that exists in American society since Social
Security went belly up. They sought those benefits knowing full well that they
would be expected to earn them by spilling the blood and taking the freedom of
people of their own race in the NAR. That’s unforgivable, and the State President
is right to decree that anyone who does that, anyone who sets foot in our country in
order to do harm, has to die.
“But we’re talking big picture stuff here, Rich. We’re going to win this war,
I can tell you that. I can feel it. Our two big secret weapons have worked, we’ve
knocked the Americans out of the sky both physically and visually, and without
their toys, they’re done for. That’s great, and I intend to help any way I can and kill
anybody I have to in order to make that victory happen. I don’t deceive myself as
to the result. Twenty years from now, there aren’t going to be millions of young
white people walking around saying ‘Gee, thanks Northwest Republic, for not
gassing my mom or my dad in their cubicle at the Department of Labor during the
war! You Northmen guys are all right!’ It’s just a matter of keeping the level of
hatred and fear and mistrust this war is going to engender in the non-racially-aware
white population of North America down as much as possible, so that someday
maybe we in the Republic can be reconciled to the millions of our people who
either chose to stay here, or in most cases simply never thought to leave for Home
because the Jews programmed their brains not to.
“You’ll notice that the cities we’ve hit with our witches’ brews are almost
entirely niggerized and beanerfied,” Cardinale pointed out. “Some of those places
where our teams have let a deadly fart, like Detroit and Atlanta and Baltimore,
have gone completely feral under years of black rule. There’s no industry or
infrastructure left to destroy there, nothing of value, just packs of wild black
animals roaming in the ruins, and some gook storekeepers who make a living
relieving them of their welfare money. The only whites in danger in Detroit or
Atlanta or New Orleans are anyone stupid enough to wander into the primates’
habitat. We’ve launched biochem attacks on those cities, sure, but mostly for
psychological and eugenic reasons.”
“Psychological and eugenic?” asked Bob. “Psychological warfare I get, but
I’m not with you on the eugenics.”
“Culling the herds, young man, culling the herds,” said Cardinale. “Most of
the population in all-black or all-Hispanic areas is very young, and so it follows
that by attacking those areas and killing as many of them as we can, we’re not just
killing X thousand niggers or beaners, we’re killing all the hundreds of thousands
of picaninnies and bambinos they might have bred, and their grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, etc. What put the white man on the road to demographic extinction
back in the twentieth century?” asked Vinnie in a professorial tone. “Our
participation in two hideous world wars between the European peoples, to the point
where untold millions of white children all across the world were simply never
born, because their fathers and mothers and grandparents died on the Somme or at
Anzio or in the Dresden and Hamburg firestorms, so forth and so on.
“What kept us from being physically overrun by literally billions of niggers
and gooks during the late 20th and early 21st centuries? A series of brushfire wars in
Africa and Asia such as Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Vietnam, Biafra, Rwanda,
Darfur, and of course, the mass disease and starvation in Africa that came from the
blacks’ complete and total inability to cope with the modern world and take care of
themselves. If it hadn’t been for those natural culls, the world would be all black
and yellow today instead of mostly black and yellow like it is. Sorry, I’m rambling,
but the fact is that’s another reason we need to try and keep white casualties on all
sides as light as possible during this war—if we can wipe out large numbers of
mud people while preserving what’s left of the shattered white gene pool as much
as we can, we might be able actually to start re-balancing the demographic scales
at some point in the future.
“That’s one reason we haven’t hit New York and D.C. with alternate
warfare,” Cardinale went on. “The second reason is so we can scare the hell out of
the remaining responsible elements in this country and make sure that after we
have well and truly whipped them down into jelly, when Red Morehouse
generously offers to call off the dogs, he has a stick as well as a carrot to offer. We
need to make it clear to the ruling élite of the United States that we are entirely
capable of destroying what they have left, and if they want to keep it, they’d
damned well better make peace on whatever terms our State President decides to
offer them, when the time comes. And it will.”
“But you’re planning some attacks here?” persisted Campbell. “I’m in, sir. I
mean it. The invaders have been stopped, but they’re still on our soil. My family is
in Montana, and I have no idea what’s happened to them. I keep thinking of Millie
and my children in … in some kind of situation …” Bob clenched his fist, hard.
“I’m here and I can’t help them. I should be out there in Anaconda with my X-3,
making damned sure those animals don’t get anywhere near them. But if I can’t
shoot them like a soldier I’ll damned sure gas them or poison them!”
“I get that, son,” said Cardinale with a nod. “But you in turn need to get that
right now, you among all our millions of soldiers are doing the one thing that
might be the most important job of any one of us, the mission that might save us
all. You are helping that brave girl in that cesspit on Pennsylvania Avenue tell us
what those murderers are up to in time for us to stay one step ahead of them. By
warning us of those paratroop drops alone, she saved thousands of Northwest lives.
Now, how is the Beautiful Lady holding up?”
“She’s running on raw nerves and God knows what else,” said Bob grimly.
“She’s losing weight and she’s starting to look haggard around the eyes and mouth
from not sleeping. She’s admitted to me that sometimes the urge to light up a joint
at least, or to start drinking again, is becoming almost overwhelming. The stress is
getting to her. The White House is full of new security procedures, all kinds of
strange spooks from half a dozen agencies roaming up and down the halls, huddled
over computers in cubbyholes and whispering to one another in corners. They’re
getting more and more frantic and paranoid, the clearer it becomes each day that
the United States is losing the war. They’re looking for scapegoats. The FBI is revetting everybody who works at Sixteen Hundred, complete new security workups
and background checks. Georgia being born in Montana is raising eyebrows again,
and she thinks the Secret Service is trying to get her kicked out before her contract
is up. That head agent, the ex-Fattie, Lyons, has never liked her being there.
Fortunately, she was completely clean from their point of view until I knocked on
her door a couple of months ago. They’d just finished going over her background
with a fine-toothed comb. They found a lot of bad craziness but nothing political,
and that’s all they’ll find now.”
“The possible relapse into drugs and booze worries the hell out of me,” said
Cardinale. “It worries the hell out of Jake Shapira, too.”
“It really sounds funny referring to a comrade by a Jewish name,” said
Campbell, shaking his head in bemusement. “When this is all over, somebody
needs to tell me the doc’s real name.”
“I don’t know it, and he may not remember it,” said Cardinale. “Out Here
you can end up losing yourself in your cover and forgetting who you really are. No
kidding. I’ve been Vinnie Skins for so long that I swear I have these vague
memories of my childhood in New Jersey that never happened. Be glad you’re
only Out Here for the short term. When you get back Home, you may find yourself
thinking and acting like Richie for a while. I hope your wife is understanding.”
“I don’t know what she’d think of Richie the Buttlegger, but I damned sure
know what she’ll say about these tattoos!” said Campbell, lifting his be-Lila’ed
arm. “Speaking of which, I know we’re not supposed to act curious about fellow
team members, but Betsy’s let some things slip over the past couple of months that
give me the impression there’s a story there. She said once she’s never even been
back Home since she was a kid. How is that possible? I mean, she’d have to go
back to go through SoI on Whidbey Island, at least?”
“Betsy never went to SoI,” said Cardinale, shaking his head. “We recruited
her locally. Fortunately for us, she’s turned out to be a natural. Yeah, there’s a
story there, and I suppose you ought to know it, just so you don’t end up putting
your foot in it with her. She’s from a little town out in eastern Washington called
Wheeler, or it was called Wheeler. It was out near Moses Lake somewhere.”
“Was?” asked Bob.
“Yeah, was. It’s gone now,” Cardinale told him, “The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers dynamited all the buildings, burned what they could, and bulldozed the
rubble into a landfill during the last year of the war. I don’t know if the Republic
ever rebuilt it. The NVA had an active company out there, attached to the Yakima
Brigade. Can’t remember the details, never got down that way myself, but that
particular crew specialized in whacking Indians. They used to leave cards at their
hits saying it was revenge for Kennewick Man or some such. They shot some selfproclaimed chief of the Hunkapoop tribe or whatever, coming out of the liquor
store just outside the res, of course. Turned out this redskin was a real favorite with
the liberal media back east here, kind of their official Native American Mascot
from the Racist Northwest.”
“And here I thought we were all Native Americans, by virtue of being born
here,” sneered Bob.
“Not if you’re the wrong color, no,” said Cardinale. “Yeah, that one always
used to get my back up as well. Anyway, when Chief Running Nose was sent to
the happy hunting ground, there was all kinds of screaming and hollering about
wicked white men completing the genocide of the noble red man, all that happy
horseshit. The Volunteers who did the deed were out of reach, but the political
pressure was on for the feds to do something, jump up and down and shit
snowballs, whatever. So the FATPOs moved in and arrested the entire population
of Wheeler, which was four or five hundred people, and deported them all to the
FEMA camps in Nevada.”
“Oh, Jesus!” said Bob, shaking his head. “I’ve heard of those camps. Let me
guess. Was Betsy … ?”
“She was,” said Cardinale grimly. “She was about thirteen at the time, so she
was considered too old for It Takes a Village, her mind being already corrupted
with wicked racism and the King James Bible, so forth and so on. So she got to go
along for the ride. Betsy and her mother and her little brother were dragged out of
their house around dawn and thrown into the back of an eighteen-wheeler along
with about seventy other people, standing room only, and then they hit the road
south. No stops along the way, at least not for the deportees. By the time the truck
got to the camp in Pahrump, only about half of the people in the truck were still
alive, and Betsy’s brother was dead. Heat and dehydration. The child was about
six, I think. Betsy’s mother died a few months later of the same causes plus
malnutrition, starvation, intermittent beatings, and occasional bouts of interracial
gang rape at the hands of the guards, most of whom were nigger and Mexican
military stockade inmates, acting as trusties under the so-called supervision of the
army MPs. Once her mother died, Betsy was left there on her own. Do you want
me to go on?”
“No, sir,” said Campbell. “I’m sorry I asked. I won’t say anything to her to
let on that I know. We all know some Mandingo older women back home. There’s
a rule that we somehow get taught, but it’s so subtle that most of us can’t even
remember where we learned it. I know I can’t.”
“Say nothing, remember everything,” quoted Cardinale. “Yes, I’ve heard it,
and it doesn’t just apply to Mandingo experiences. Anyway, Betsy ended up here
in D.C. through a series of events I won’t get into, and we were lucky enough to
pick her up. The reason Betsy has never been Home is that she feels she has
nothing to go Home to.”
“That’s not true, sir!” said Campbell sadly. “She has the land we made out
of what we took from them to go home to. She can start over. That’s what the
Republic is there for, for Christ’s sake!”
“Maybe someday she will,” said the older man. “Right now she doesn’t see
it that way. She’s into the whole lifelong revenge thing, and you’re right, you do
not talk to her about any of this. We can’t give that girl much in exchange for all
she does for us, but we can damned sure give her respect!”
***
On the first day of July, White House Press Secretary Angela Herrin sat in
the Oval Office with her shapely legs crossed, speaking to the President of the
United States as if he were a small, stubborn child. “Mr. President, you must begin
to think seriously about the Apocalypse Option,” she said. “The war so far has
been an unmitigated disaster. Every day, half measures are being conclusively
proven not to work. The effect on everything from our national morale to our
economy has been catastrophic, not to mention the fact that your re-election
prospects for a third term are now in serious jeopardy.”
“My re-election is in the bag,” said Wallace with a confidence he did not
really feel. “No nation is going to change horses in midstream in the middle of a
major war like this.”
Angela sighed. “Mr. President, you are speaking as if the actual vote totals
in an American general election have any relevance to the result. We both know
that hasn’t been the case for several generations.”
White House Chief of Staff Ronald Schiff spoke up firmly. “Sir, you seem to
be forgetting who counts the votes, and who constitutes the majority shareholders
in the Diebold Corporation that manufactures and controls the voting machines,
not to mention the fact that the CEO of Diebold is Mordecai Eshkol, an Israeli
businessman who will not be impressed with any apparent lack of political will to
deal with this Nazi abomination in the Pacific Northwest.”
“What, so you guys are threatening me now?” demanded Wallace, a bit of
bluster in his voice. “How soon they forget! I’ve been a friend of the Jewish people
all my life, ever since I was running my own little racist internet operation back in
the ‘teens and voluntarily sending every name and address and bit of information I
picked up to the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center, just to let you know
whose side I was on!”
“We remember, and we’re very grateful, sir,” purred Angela. “But this is a
crucial moment in our history, and we need for you to come through for us in the
one way that will ultimately count. We need you to destroy our enemies for us.
Think of your legacy, sir! You know how grateful we can be to those who come
through for us when it counts. By 1940, Winston Churchill was a washed-up,
brandy-soaked has-been, out of office and out of the mainstream, who was detested
even by his own party as an amoral hack without a principle to his name. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was on the verge of being impeached for trying to pack the
Supreme Court with his own personal flunkies, even as he was reviled for having
created the beginnings of a welfare state that, even then, wise heads knew would
lead to serious trouble and danger to the nation someday, while at the same time he
failed to end the Great Depression. But those men came through for the Jewish
people and took down Hitler for us, and so to this day, they are regarded as
veritable saints throughout the entire civilized world. It’s just smart politics to stay
on the right side of the people who control and shape the narrative, and who write
the history books, or nowadays the history movies and TV.”
“Senator Nivens has already indicated to us in private that he would be in
favor of using the Apocalypse Option,” remarked Schiff casually.
“Oh, I get it,” said Wallace irritably. “I give the order to nuke the Northwest
or else the Jewish lobby will switch their support to Nivens at the One Nation
Indivisible convention in August?”
“You can’t win a third term if you’re not nominated, sir,” said Schiff with a
truly Yiddish shrug of his shoulders.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t even know if the Apocalypse Option
is on the table!” said Wallace. “These ray gun things have knocked down almost
all the Cruise missiles that have been fired at the Northwest Republic, or entity, or
sewing circle, or whatever we’re calling it this week. We don’t even know that
nuclear ICBMs will get through! The nearest silos are in Kansas and Minnesota.
That’s plenty of warning for the Nazis to focus those whatever-the-hell-they-are
weapons. So once we’ve shot our final bolt and it fails, what then?”
“How will you look to the country by August, by which time you will have
lost at least one of the armies you sent into the Northwest completely and maybe
all three, and there may be Nazi tanks rolling towards the convention hall in
Chicago?” asked Angela urgently. “Sir, I know a nuclear strike will be a hard sell,
but hard sells are what you do best! Your speech to the convention must be a
victory speech!”
“And what about the ray guns?” asked Wallace.
“I admit, we don’t even know if Apocalypse will work now,” said Angela.
“There’s only one way to find out. We fire our entire nuclear arsenal at all their
cities, maybe two dozen each on Seattle and Portland to make sure at least one gets
through, multiple missiles against lesser cities like Spokane and Boise and Eugene
and Corvallis, you get the idea.”
Wallace scowled. “What about the fallout and collateral damage of a nuclear
hit on Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia? How do you think Prime Minister
Simoneau and the international community will react to that? How about all those
Jews you mentioned who live in Vancouver, all those Israeli survivors you were so
worried about being traumatized?”
“The Jewish community in Vancouver is being quietly evacuated, and has
been since the beginning of the war,” replied Schiff calmly.
Wallace almost let fly with a remark about rats leaving a sinking ship, but he
choked it back through lifelong force of habit. “Okay, how about Montana and
northern Idaho? What about our own troops who are dug in and surrounded and
outnumbered by enemy armies, troops we can’t even resupply because we can’t
reach them by air or by ground? Hundreds of thousands of men, and the biggest
problem isn’t even combat casualties. Do you know that Scheisskopf estimates that
Group South can hold out for less than a week on what food and water they have
remaining, and the other two armies at Fairfield and Ponderay are in just as bad a
shape? What about them?”
“Give them a Fourth of July present, Mr. President!” urged Angela, her eyes
sparkling at the thought of mass slaughter of anti-Semites. “Launch America’s
nuclear arsenal of democracy on the birthday of our nation!” (Angela was
forgetting for the moment that she had been born in Israel.) “At the same time the
mushroom clouds go up, order a massive breakout offensive on the part of all three
of our besieged army groups! The Nazis will be in shock and awe, reeling from the
destruction of their cities and their industries and their families! Maybe God will
even stop the sun in its tracks once more so our godel hadorim can keep on killing
the Jew-hating bastards!”
“You want me to order a massive nuclear strike against the Northwest on the
Fourth of July?” laughed Wallace. “I have to admit, that would be one hell of a
fireworks display!”
There was a knock on the door of the Oval Office. “Yes?” called Wallace,
Georgia Myers walked into the room. “Five o’clock, Mr. President,” she
announced pertly, as if she were reminding him of a perfectly ordinary
appointment. “I see you’re busy. Want me to come back?”
“Give us ten more minutes, Ms. Halberstam,” said Wallace, as if she were a
perfectly normal secretary.
“Sure.” Georgia left, closing the door behind her, but when she had
approached it had been slightly ajar, and she had heard Wallace’s last remark. She
slipped into the lady’s room down the hall, selected a stall on the end nearest the
wall which she had carefully determined was out of range of the new camera
which had been installed by the Secret Service and DHS despite the ferocious
protests of the female staff, and quickly texted out a coded message to Bob
Campbell on her phone, which she concealed in a color picture of Snuffles, a potbellied pig which had been given to President Wallace by a little girl in Iowa and
had become the official White House mascot.
“Shit!” said Campbell in his car, once he had decoded the message. He
pulled over on his way to a barbecued chicken delivery to DuPont Circle long
enough to pass the message on to Birdie, who passed it on to Vinnie Skins, who
passed it on to Fort Lewis. The expletives that echoed through the NDF General
Staff within the hour, on learning that the Jews now threatened their country with
nuclear mass murder, were far stronger than Bob Campbell’s monosyllable. About
two hours after Georgia had sent her text, Vincent Cardinale got a coded top
priority order, on paper of all things, through an archaic device in his desk known
in the late twentieth century as a fax machine. It was so old that the DHS and FBI
no longer bothered to try and detect or decrypt fax-modulated land line signals; no
one there remembered them, or remembered what to look for.
Vinnie knew his own codes well enough so he didn’t have to use his key.
The order was simple: We have to send a message. Cack those kikes.
Cardinale nodded grimly, and quickly coded and sent his reply: It’s done.
***
Casualty summary: June 22nd – July 1st
NDF military casualties – 3,712 dead and 7,880 wounded
NAR civilian casualties – 1,912 dead and 3,740 wounded
United States military casualties – 25,909 dead and 19,336 wounded
United States civilian casualties – 101,456 dead and 302,348 wounded, gassed, or
ill from biowar agents, casualties overwhelmingly non-white
Aztlan military casualties – Est. approx. 170,000 dead, 115,000 wounded
Aztlan civilian casualties – Est. approx 261,500 dead, unknown number
wounded, gassed, or ill from biowar agents
XVII. A Piece of the Fox’s Hide
(D-Day plus 14 days)
When the hide of the lion will not reach, it must be patched with that of the fox. –
Lysandros of Sparta
On the third day of July, the Northwest Republic’s State President, Red
Morehouse, stood on a rise at the edge of the Lost Creek Forest in his camouflage
fatigues. He slowly panned his binoculars over the besieged town in the distance.
Morehouse could see the muzzle flashes of the Northwest army’s massed artillery
firing all up and down the long valley, while inside the American-occupied town
he could see the shells striking and flashing, and geysers of dirt and masonry and
wreckage shooting high into the air, as well as occasional human bodies. Around
Morehouse were parked the three Ground Hog-mounted projectors of a Bluelight
battery, escorting his mobile command post to take care of any Predator drones or
Tomahawk missiles that might amble by with the intent of whacking out the
Republic’s head of state, He was surrounded as well by the SS company from the
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler that served as the presidential protection detail in time
of war. But there was no enemy nearby. Bluelight had swept Hunter Wallace’s
missiles and aircraft from the sky, and his soldiers were boxed in down in the
valley, where they were being slowly slaughtered.
Almost 75,000 U.S. Army soldiers and Marines, the bruised and exhausted
remains of the U.S. Combined Military Group South that had so proudly rolled out
of Billings several weeks before for what they thought would be Baghdad Boogie,
were dug into an area of about nine square miles of Anaconda, Montana, where
they hunkered down in whatever cover they could find and crawled through the
rubble of the town. Their lines of trenches, earthworks, barricades and hasty
fortifications ran roughly along Cable Road to the north through the old golf
course, and along the Stumptown Road to the south as far east as Smelter Road.
Everything in between was a kill zone for the NDF and the Luftwaffe.
The mining and steel processing town of Anaconda, the only important
Northwest industrial and administrative center to fall to the American enemy, was
set in a heavily forested, mile-high valley in Deer Lodge County, surrounded by
the Pintler Mountains right on the Continental Divide. Anaconda’s 15,000
inhabitants had been evacuated in time. The Americans had captured an empty
town with the electrical and communications grid disabled and the water and sewer
mains blown to pieces by the NDF troops who had just left hours before. The
stores and private homes were stripped of virtually everything to eat and drink,
except for the odd bottle of beer and spring water left lying around, some of which
were poisoned and some of which weren’t. The bewildered Americans had
captured their first objective all right, but almost all of them were now on foot and
exhausted after a hellish march in heavy kit and body armor through baking
Montana heat, and they barely had time to get their bearings when the first shells
from the Fourth Army’s artillery batteries concealed in the Lost Creek and Deer
Lodge ranges began dropping on them.
It took the Americans only a short while to realize that they were surrounded
by an army that outnumbered them three to one, that there would be no re-supply
by air, and that there was no food and above all very little water, while their
enemies could draw as much water as they wanted from Georgetown Lake, Warm
Springs Lake, and a hundred other small lakes and streams scattered throughout the
nearby mountains. Their commanding officer, U.S. Army Major General Bentley
G. Logan, immediately ordered a breakout attack to the east, back the way they
came. He led the U. S. Army’s First Cavalry Division, the First Mechanized
Infantry Division, and two battalions of the Fifth Marine Division in a drive for
Bowman Field, the local airport, where they hoped to establish an air supply point
and a medevac point for their wounded, even if getting planes and copters through
would be the next problem. They captured the airfield, if it is possible to capture an
open expanse of potholed concrete wherein every building had been dynamited or
burned to the ground. Then the hail of artillery shells cut Logan off completely
from the rest of his command; he and the remnants of his force were still dug into
trenches they had hastily slashed into the ground around Bowman Field.
Morehouse and the Fourth Army commander General A.J. Drones had not
hesitated for an instant to order the destruction of one of the Republic’s own cities
that was defiled by the presence of a single armed nigger or Mexican. The NDF
had been bombarding Anaconda for almost five days now, with over two thousand
artillery pieces and multiple rocket launchers, hundreds of Starfighter and Songbird
aircraft, and mortars beyond counting. What was once the downtown area of
Anaconda was now a burning slagheap, which even now as the State President
watched was being churned up by the slow pounding of the shells. All along the
siege lines, the Northwest cannon were firing in slow sequences to conserve
ammunition; they had all the time in the world. Each battery dropped ten shells on
a certain grid coordinate called in by the forward spotters, or in some cases the rear
spotters high on the wooded ridges of the foothills above the valley, which
afforded a better view. Then the next battery down the line did the same on another
coordinate, until the wave came back around again. The result was a an almost lazy
but constant rain of explosives and incendiaries on the town, twenty-four hours a
day, all day and night, for five days straight so far. The Americans were not only
short on food and water; they had to be getting very little sleep. The barrage had
slowly and leisurely disassembled the entire town; barely one brick remained
standing on another, and the Americans were huddled in trenches or cellars or
gutted ruins with no way to fire back and silence the constant thudding guns.
The lack of their air power and satellite surveillance had allowed the poor
quality of the American troops and the low caliber of officers and leadership, for
many decades always hidden behind a screen of high-tech razzle-dazzle, to come
to the fore. Now the U.S. military paid the price for generations of political
correctness, tactical laziness, and moral corruption. Low-tech in sufficient quantity
and with guts behind it was trumping high-tech manipulated by monkeys. Man was
triumphing over machine, courage over the computer. World War One was indeed
defeating World War Three.
Most of the trees throughout the valley had been knocked down by various
kinds of ordnance over the past few days, and large numbers of troops from the
350,000-man Fourth Army weren’t even engaged in combat, but were on
firefighting duty putting out the dozens of brushfires that threatened to spread from
the battle zone. The sight spread out below Morehouse now resembled a shellblasted moonscape that shimmered in the July heat even through the smoke and the
dust thrown up by the NDF artillery shells. “How long before those poor bastards
run out of water, you think, General?” Morehouse asked A.J. Drones, a wiry man
with a drooping blond moustache laced with gray who stood at his side.
“No telling, Mr. President, but they’re starting to get desperate,” said
Drones. “Some of the white soldiers are starting to crawl out of their positions at
night, trying to surrender. We shoot ‘em down as per order. I would imagine a
shortage of food and water is largely in play with that.”
“Any chance of reconsidering your deguello, Mr. President?” asked Security
Minister Frank Barrow, also standing beside Morehouse with a pair of field
glasses. “Those men down there are our enemies, granted, but a lot of them are of
our own race.”
“Not with this lot,” said Morehouse. “Frank, believe me, I’ve lost sleep over
that, and I’m going to lose more now that I’ve seen what those men are enduring,
no matter what color they are. But the United States of America has sent three
invading armies into our land, and we dare not show weakness or hold our hand.
We have to completely destroy at least one of those armies in order to make our
point, so that when we do show mercy to the white men among the other two, the
world will know that’s what it is, mercy and not weakness. If we can, we’ll offer
the white soldiers of Group Center and Group North a chance to live—but to do so,
they’ll have to acknowledge their own blood, maybe for the first time in their lives,
and abandon their niggers and their mud-colored allies. That’s the political point
we have to make, and make them understand. We have to force them to accept
their lives at our hands as white men, and not as soldiers of an illegitimate
interracial tyranny. That’s what history must record, that we showed mercy not to
Americans, but to our own blood brothers. So what have you come all the way out
here to tell me?”
“This is sufficiently sensitive so I didn’t want to entrust it even to a secure
line, sir,” said Barrow. “We’ve got word from Station Cesspool. Major Cardinale
says he’s worked out a plan to take down both of Wallace’s Hofjuden, but he
warns us that Belladonna herself may be compromised, and he’s very twitchy
about that, as well he might be. We can’t afford to lose her. He’s asking for
confirmation to proceed.”
“Those two Jews are urging the President of the United States to use nuclear
weapons against the Northwest American Republic,” said Morehouse. “Hunter
Wallace is a clever politician but a weak man. He thinks only in terms of political
expediency. The morality of slaughtering hundreds of thousands and maybe
millions of his own race at the behest of Jews is something that simply will not
enter into his calculations. I can’t take the risk that he will allow himself to be
persuaded by those hebes. We must not only remove him from their sphere of
influence, but we have to let him know through their death that we know what
they’ve been up to, and if he even so much as thinks about pushing that button he’s
next, and not the entire might of the United States can save him from our wrath.
The man is a personal coward and we have to hope that the death of his two little
Jewish handlers will concentrate his mind. I realize the risk to that brave young
woman in the White House, but I have a whole nation and a whole new generation
of white children to think about, children whom I will not allow to die of nuclear
incineration or radiation poisoning. No more Dresdens, Frank. No more Hamburgs
or Colognes, no more Wilhelm Gustloffs, not ever, at least not without an Aryan
revenge that will shake the very heavens! But we don’t want revenge, we want live
white children, and that means we have to stop it before it can happen. Tell
Cardinale he’s got my okay, and I don’t mean just the two Jewish advisors. From
now on he’s got my okay to take out Wallace himself if the opportunity offers.”
“You want to turn Belladonna from an intel to an assassination mission,
sir?” asked Barrow.
“Yes, if it’s feasible, and if there is at least a chance to extract that girl and
get her out of there alive beforehand,” said Morehouse with a nod. “In the past two
weeks I have had to order thousands of men to their deaths, but I won’t do that to
her. That would be a damned foul way to repay what she’s done for us, and I still
intend to maintain at least some shred of pretense that we’re better than they are.
Tell Vince it’s a go on taking out Wallace, but he prioritizes Belladonna’s safety
and her extraction, with her child.”
“Wallace would kill you without a second’s hesitation if he could, sir,”
offered Drones.
“I know, Andrew, but that’s not why I’m giving this order,” said Morehouse.
“The thought of using those nukes has now crossed his mind, and no American
president who has ever had such a thought even so much as cross his mind can be
allowed to live. It’s like a dog that starts killing chickens or savaging sheep. It
doesn’t matter how well behaved such a dog is normally, once he understands that
it can be done, he has to be put down.”
***
“We’re go on Herrin and Schiff, and we also have a green light to kill the
president if we can do so and still save the Lady,” Vince Cardinale told his
Belladonna team several hours later. They were gathered in Birdie’s basement
computer center in Arlington. Byrd had proven himself to be loyal and invaluable
since the war began, and Cardinale had taken the chance of bringing him up to
speed on the main operation itself, although he withheld the actual identity of the
WPB’s spy inside the White House from him. “It’s simple, Vinnie,” Birdie had
told him. “Beatings, buggery, and waterboarding I can take, but when the
electrodes go on my balls, that’s when I start singing like a canary. Those are your
parameters, so work within them.”
Byrd had provided the team with two electronic devices, micro-global
positioning indicators the size of a thumbnail that had to be planted somewhere on
Angela Herrin and Ronald Schiff’s person so the WPB hit teams could locate and
track down their targets. “Doc, were you able to move her head-tuning
appointment up?” asked Vinnie Skins.
“Yes, it seems I had an unavoidable scheduling conflict. She’ll be there for
her weekly therapy session at six p.m. tonight,” said Shapira. “Or as soon
thereafter as the Leader of the Free World gets through with his afternoon orgy. I
don’t like doing it, though. It’s a break in pattern that the Secret Service might
notice, especially after the fireworks tonight, but I know we have to give her these
tracking devices and hope to God she can plant them.”
“So she can be back in the White House by what? Twenty past seven?”
asked Cardinale.
“Yes,” said Shapira.
“The late briefing in the Situation Room for their War Cabinet always starts
at nine, and it’s usually over by ten-thirty or eleven, then the staff generally leave
the buildings for sleep or for dissipations elsewhere,” said Bob/Richie, reciting
from memory some of the wealth of information and White House gossip he’d
picked up from Georgia. “Neither of the targets overnight much at the White
House, although they do have guest bedrooms assigned in the residence for that
purpose. Angela Herrin generally goes right home to her pad on 12th Street
Northeast in Brookland, where a couple of nights in the week she receives
whatever lover she’s getting it on with at the moment. She runs through them like a
dose of salts. All white, all gentiles, everyone from low-level lawyers to baristas to
garage mechanics, guys who have credible deniability and won’t be missed if she
decides to cut their throats during sex play or whatever she does. Apparently, she’s
quite the black widow. These guys either leave by two a.m., or in some cases they
don’t leave at all. According to West Wing gossip, she’s supposed to be fucking
her bodyguard as well, some Israeli thug named Mordecai Kravitsky, who helps
her dump the bodies of her other toy boys up in some landfill in Prince George’s
County, where they never seem to get found until they’re too decomposed for
forensics, as if anybody would investigate anyway.”
“White bodies turn up all over Maryland all the time,” grunted Cardinale.
“The cops are all niggers, so no one gives a damn.”
“This guy Kravitsky is ex-Mossad, and he’s usually her sole security,” Bob
went on. “Ronald Schiff, the White House chief of staff, either goes home, or he
calls in to his wife in Georgetown claiming he’s working late and then he goes
clubbing along with a couple of his Secret Service detail who also like to boogie.
We might be able to catch him and take him down in Muldoon’s Pub or the Wiley
Coyote. Sometimes he picks up a shiksa and he ends up in the Watergate complex
in one of those special fuck-pads various power élite types maintain there.”
“Yes, I know about them,” said Shapira. “They’re in a different part of the
complex and the whole area is not only monitored but guarded by top-end, armed
private security. It’s a lot more locked down than the office area where I am. Our
lords and masters want to make sure they’re not interrupted in mid-debauch.”
Bob went on: “The thing is, Georgia’s supposed to be kicking back in the
residence upstairs in the East Wing at night, while she waits for her second shift, so
to speak. Not wandering around the West Wing schmoozing or chatting with
people, especially not cabinet people and senior poobahs like the press secretary
and chief of staff. Especially not during a war crisis when the place is on full
security alert. Remember, for all her technical status as an employee and her fullaccess ID card, everybody knows who Georgia is and what she’s there for, and
she’s considered to be maybe one cut above the help. Some of them probably think
she’s lower than the help, and our two hose-noses seem to be in that category.
Georgia may be able to get next to the president on a regular basis, but so far as she
can recall, neither Herrin nor Schiff have ever even acknowledged her existence or
addressed a single word to her. She can’t just walk into their offices for a
conversation. She just plain might not be able to do this for us, even if she’s
willing. She might not be able to find a way to get close to the targets.”
“We have to see if she’s willing first,” said Cardinale. “That means you
three have a whole hour to persuade her to plant the tracking devices.” He nodded
at Shapira, Bob Campbell, and Betsy. He was sending in the whole crew who were
known to Georgia to persuade and reassure her, because the mission was now
being taken to a new and dangerous level. “Is she going to go for it?”
“I think she will,” said Betsy confidently. “She’s packing a lot of
resentment, right back to the time when that bitch mother of hers kidnapped her.
When people treat a woman like the inhabitants of this toilet have treated her,
she’ll do anything to hit back any way she can.” Bob reflected grimly that in light
of his newly acquired knowledge of her past, Betsy undoubtedly knew what she
was talking about.
“Richie?” asked Cardinale.
“I’m not sure, sir,” Bob said in a worried voice. “She’s on edge, and this
wasn’t what she signed up for.”
“Tell her I know that,” said Cardinale. “Tell her whatever you have to, but
you’ve got to get her to do it. Or at least try. Otherwise, we’re going to have to
intercept both of those Red Sea pedestrians and pull off two floats right in the
Green Zone. We’ll do that if we have to, in order to stop them from whispering
sweet nuclear nothings in the president’s ear, but it’s going to get dicey under the
best of circumstances. We’re taking anti-tank weapons that can breach the armor in
their limos, but if we have to take them on the fly, our own E&E will be
problematic."
Bob knew that the CO was understating the case. Two spontaneous and
bloody attacks against the White House press secretary and chief of staff right on
the streets of Washington, D.C., in the middle of the ESMA and under the
surveillance cameras, would set off the capitol city’s entire emergency response
protocol and bring down on them everything from the FBI and D.C. Metro Police
SWAT teams, to the special Delta Force unit standing by at Fort Belvoir. The city
would be locked down tight within three minutes, any escape from the spy cameras
on every corner would become impossible, and the whole thing would become
even more of a suicide mission than it already was. The Circus operatives had to
have some way to track and locate both targets, so they could plan their strike and
work out some kind of getaway that might give them a chance. Byrd had promised
to do what he could to hack and take out the surveillance cameras in both
immediate contact points when it went down, and to cover the gunners’ escape and
evasion. But in order to do that he had to know where it was to happen, he needed
some idea of the getaway route, and he had to receive at least a little advance
notice. “You said you’re authorizing us to promise her extraction after tonight,
sir?” asked Bob keenly. “You don’t want to use her to set up Hunter Wallace
himself for assassination?”
“That’s affirmative,” said Cardinale. “The president—our president, not the
tubby little pervert—has ordered specifically that we are not to place her in any
more danger than is absolutely unavoidable. We made this woman a promise for
her and her child, and we’re going to keep it. I agree with that order, and not just
on moral grounds. It would be too dangerous to hit Wallace, leaving her in place
and hoping she could brazen it out when the heat comes on. It will be a near
enough thing when we take out these two kikes tonight, and the whole security
system freaks out in a St. Vitus’s dance of paranoia. We’ll find some other way to
bake the Doughboy. If nothing else, Duke and I both are pretty good shots, and a
.50-caliber bullet has a hell of a range. The son of a bitch can’t hide over there in
the Oval Office forever. He’ll have to show his face sooner or later, and one day
when he does, he’ll have no more face left to show.”
A bit later Bob and Betsy drove across the river into the Green Zone in his
car and parked in the Watergate’s underground lot. Betsy took Bob’s hand as if he
was a boyfriend or a trick, and led him giggling and jiggling to a certain elevator
that was just out of range of the CCTV cameras. They both slipped into a utility
closet using a forged passcard that opened the door without registering on the
building’s door access log in the Watergate’s security control room, an invention
of Birdie’s that had revitalized the American burglary industry and on its own had
already made him a millionaire through underworld sales. Although of course,
being a millionaire didn’t mean all that much any more, what with the inflation.
The utility closet opened into a disused workshop, something that the security
designers for the complex seemed to have forgotten. Five minutes later, having
followed a circuitous route of great complexity that avoided every single camera,
they sat in Dr. Jake Shapira’s consulting room.
Shapira himself came in through the front entrance. At seven o’clock they
were joined by Georgia Myers for her weekly session of bitching about how
President of the United States or not, she wasn’t paid enough for all the leather
loving and ancient Roman role-playing involved in doing her duty to her country.
At least, that’s what Shapira reported back to the Secret Service that she was
saying. Georgia was wearing a yellow pastel blouse, brown leather skirt and
sandals tonight, all of which got ash on them as she sat chain-smoking cigarette
after cigarette. Her face was still beautiful, but she was pale and haggard, and her
movements were brittle and jerky. Bob was right in his assessment: the pressure
was starting to tell on her. We have to get her out of there soon, or they’re going to
notice, Bob thought urgently to himself. “Emergency meeting with all three of you
guys tonight?” Georgia remarked, arching her eyebrows. “Something must be up,
and I can guess what. The nuke thing?”
“We’ve got some good news and some bad news, Georgia,” opened the
Zombie Master. “We think your Mata Hari gig over there at Sixteen Hundred may
well be almost done. We do need a couple more specific things from you, and yes,
they do concern the disturbing possibility of a nuclear strike on the Republic.
When this last assignment is done, in our assessment, it will be too dangerous for
you to stay over there any longer, and we haven’t forgotten our promise to you.
Are you ready to clear out?”
“You mean it?” she asked, looking at Bob. He nodded. She exhaled smoke
and seemed to slump in her chair. “Yes, I’m ready. God, am I ready to see
Montana again!”
“We’ve got some trespassers there right now that we need to clear out first,
but looks like that will just be a matter of time,” said Bob. “We’re winning on
every front, or at least holding them.”
“Yes, it’s time, Georgia,” said Shapira. “You’ll be extracted, and you and
your daughter will be taken to a safe house far away from D.C. You can ride out
the war there, and once it’s safe, you and Allura can finally Go Home. With the
thanks of a grateful nation, might I add.”
“Now, these last little things you want me to do?” probed Georgia,
immediately spotting the hook in the bait.
Bob picked up the ball. “Georgia, our original intention was never to have
you actually do anything overt,” he said gently. “Just pass information on to us.
But you know now what’s at stake. If those two kikes Angela Herrin and Ronald
Schiff are left with unfettered access to the president, given the way the American
military is losing the war, they will eventually persuade him to launch America’s
nuclear arsenal at the Northwest Republic. There now seems to be no doubt that we
can beat these swine in open battle, thanks to our ability to knock out their air
power and their satellite surveillance and force them to take us on man-to-man on
the ground, but the terrible destruction of even a few atomic warheads going off
anywhere in the Republic would overwhelm all our emergency services and
preparations and would be more than we could cope with. I honestly don’t know
what would happen, except that it would unleash our own version of the
Apocalypse Option in retaliation, which means full-blown gas and bio attacks all
over the United States. The amount of death and destruction which will follow if
Hunter Wallace gives that order is beyond human calculation. The effects of the
radiation alone will last for generations and will spread over half the world, not
that anyone over there at Sixteen Hundred gives a damn. Large portions of the
Republic could well become uninhabitable. No one questions your courage,
Georgia, you’ve proven that time and again over the past couple of months…”
“You’re going to kill the president, and you want me to help,” said Georgia
baldly.
“No,” said Bob, shaking his head. “We wouldn’t do anything like that with
you still over there in the White House. That would be throwing you to the wolves,
and we don’t do that to our own. The Secret Service and the whole régime would
go berserk and start lashing out in all directions, and you would be the first one
dragged under the microscope. Even if they didn’t suspect you outright, they’d
probably give you the whole truth-serum-and-torture cocktail just on general
principles. No, we want you to do just two things for us, Georgia, difficult tasks to
be sure, but then you’re out of there. You stroll out the side portico tomorrow
morning just like usual, I pick you up, we go get Allura, and we’re outta here.”
“My mom and her servants won’t just let me walk into the house on K Street
and take Allura,” said Georgia, quietly excited by the prospect.
“Betsy and I will be going with you, and we have no intention of asking
their permission,” said Bob.
“Do you want me to cut Halberstam’s throat if he’s there?” asked Betsy.
Georgia looked at her, startled, realizing that she was dead serious.
“Come to that, I don’t care what you do to Marvin, but Bobby, please don’t
hurt my mom,” she said.
“Even after what she did to you, George?” asked Betsy. “I thought you hated
her guts?”
“Not enough to want her dead,” said Georgia. “Well, yeah, enough to want
her dead, but what can I tell you? She’s my mother. You only get one, you know?”
“Yes, I know,” said Betsy, her face expressionless. Bob almost winced, but
instead he went on.
“Okay, I won’t hurt Amber, although we may have to restrain her in order to
get your child. Now, down to the nitty-gritty. We’re not going to kill the president,
Georgia. We’re going to kill a couple of Jews, Angela Herrin and Ronald Schiff.
You know why. They intend to murder millions of our own; they will glory in
those deaths, and they will be praised through all of Zion if we allow that to
happen. But we’re not. They have raised their hand against the true chosen people
of divine cosmic destiny, and for that, they will die. If there really is any moral
order in the universe, their souls will be burning in hell this time tomorrow. We’re
going to do it tonight, before they can persuade Hunter Wallace to push that
damned button and send nuclear warheads flying towards the Homeland and
slaughter millions of white people like it was some kind of goddamned Purim
festival. But we will need your help.”
“You need my help to take two human lives?” asked Georgia.
“No, we need your help to take two Jewish lives,” Bob told her. “You know
these creatures, Georgia. Which is better, that two of them should die or that
possibly millions of white people die if our Bluelights can’t stop all those ICBMs
aimed at Seattle and Portland and Boise and Missoula?”
“Marvin Halberstam is a letch who can’t keep his hands off me, and he
keeps my mom drunk and doped up so she won’t find out what he’s doing with
grandma’s money,” said Georgia with a shrug, taking a drag on her cigarette.
“Angela and Ronald are assholes. They look at me like I’m a whore. I am, but it
isn’t up to them to remind me of the fact. If they had ever even bothered to be
polite to me, I might hesitate, but those two? Fuck ‘em. I’ve known dozens of Jews
in the past twelve years, and not one of them was a nice person. They’re nasty and
creepy insects, and they need to be stomped on. I know I should be helping you out
of love of country and love of race, and because of what these people are doing to
Montana right now, but thanks to my mother, I was raised as a petty and selfcentered American, and so I’ll help you kill them for petty and self-centered
American reasons. Congratulations, Mom. You got the red-white-and-blue
daughter you always wanted. Yaaaaaay!”
“It’s better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than to do the wrong
thing for any reason,” said the Zombie Master philosophically.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” asked Georgia.
Bob quickly ran the situation down for her and showed her the two global
positioning chips. “They are all silicon, plastic and graphite, with no metal parts or
filaments or anything like that, so they won’t trip a metal detector as you go in,” he
explained. “You see one has a little blue strip on it, and one red. That’s so we can
differentiate the signals. They’re already activated. All you need to do is place
them somewhere on Angela Herrin and Ronald Schiff, and then use your phone to
let us know which color you placed on which target, so our guys will know who
they’re following. The best way would be in something they wear or carry, in her
purse, in his jacket pocket, in his hat if he wears one, something that we know will
stay with them. Failing that, plant it in one of their briefcases if you can get near it,
something like that. Then when they leave the White House, we will be able to
follow them, run them down, and take them out.”
Georgia shook her head. “Bobby, that’s going to be real hard to do without it
standing out like a sore thumb that I’m up to something, that I’m somewhere I’ve
got no business being and fumbling around with people’s stuff. I’ll try. I really
will. I get how important this is, but you have to understand, the White House is a
very stratified place, and I’m on the very lowest level despite the fact that I see
more of Hunter than his cabinet or his staff does. It’s ironic that I could probably
plant one of these on the president himself with no trouble, but not an upper staff
member.”
“Could you arrange to bump into Angela Herrin in the lady’s room?”
suggested the Zombie Master.
“Maybe, but the problem is all the goddamned cameras in every corridor,”
Georgia told them. “They are there so that the Secret Service will know who is
where and every move everybody makes. I’d have to more or less follow her
around the halls waiting for her to step into the john, and the Secret Service
monitoring the cameras from the basement would notice. I’m supposed to go right
up to the residence when I get back tonight. I can maybe find some excuse to go
back down to the West Wing, say I forgot my lipstick or something, but it would
be pretty thin.”
“The people watching her over there aren’t just gunmen, you know,” said
the doctor. “Those agents are trained in psychology as well, how to establish
patterns of behavior in the subjects they observe and spot breaks in those patterns,
any action that looks out of the norm.”
“I’ll tell you what might be do-able,” said Georgia. “I might be able to get it
onto that big Jew legbreaker who sticks to Angela like glue, Motti. And maybe into
the pocket of one of Schiff’s Secret Service detail.”
Bob sighed. “Georgia, do what you can. Remember, one way or the other,
this is your last night over there. When you leave tomorrow, you leave for good.
That means that as long as you don’t do anything that will bring them down on you
right that very second, you won’t have to do any explaining later on. That’s all the
advice I can give you.” He looked at Betsy and Shapira. “Can you give us a
minute, comrades?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Betsy. Both of them stood up and left the room.
“This has been hard as hell for you, Peanut,” said Bob, taking Georgia’s
hand. “I know that. But what you’ve done has been the right thing. It’s been
important.”
“What happens if I can’t do it?” she asked. “Suppose I can’t plant those
tracking bugs?”
“Then you can’t do it, and our guys have to more or less pull off a kamikaze
charge somewhere on the street out there and hope they can get the job done. If
they miss and either of those two hebes survives, they will know what it’s about.
One or both of them will be dragging you and Wallace out of bed in the wee hours
of this morning terrified out of their wits from a near miss, and screaming every
argument and every threat they can to make him call for that damned briefcase
with the nuclear codes in it and give the order to push the big red button. Just to
save their own wretched lives, they will murder millions. That’s the kind of people
we’re dealing with.”
“Believe me, Bobby, after three months in that place I know what kind of
people we’re dealing with,” said Georgia. “I grew up in this town, more or less,
and I’ve always known that the people who rule the United States were corrupt and
narcissistic and completely amoral. I mean, hey, how can you live anywhere in
America and not know that, if you’re paying any kind of attention? But I’ve never
seen it close up like this before, Bobby. There’s a kind of—Jesus, I don’t know
how to describe it—there’s a kind of poison in the air over there at the White
House. It’s what it must be like when you’re at the bottom of the sea in a sunken
submarine or a diving bell, and the air starts to run out and go bad. It’s like
everybody in that place is quietly suffocating in an overpowering smell of shit,
years of it, generations of it, stacked up layer after layer, decade after decade,
generation after generation. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts and hauntings or
that kind of thing, but I’ve seen on these ghost hunter shows about how negative
energy can build up in places like the White House, all the pain and greed and
anger and hatred kind of sinking into the walls and getting absorbed by the
floorboards and the carpets, until the very wood and stone become evil. That’s the
feeling I get over there. Sorry, I know you’re probably wondering if I’ve lost it…”
“No, I don’t think that,” said Bob, still holding her hand. “I understand
exactly what you’re saying. I’m just sorry as hell I had to come back into your life
like this and send you into that place, Peanut. But tomorrow it will be over, or at
least your part in it will be done, if you can just be strong and smart and get this
done for us tonight.”
***
While the meeting in Shapira’s office was going on, Major Vince Cardinale
quietly infiltrated two armed teams of WPB assassins into the District of
Columbia, bringing them in separately over all five bridges.
The dispositions were similar to what had been done on the night of the
Close Encounter outside the South African embassy. The first hit team consisted of
Duke (Captain Frederick Fitzpatrick), Tricia (Lieutenant Alice Waters), and Little
John (Lieutenant John Cramer). The second team included June Bug (Captain
Alvin Rossbach), Frankie G. (Captain Frank Girardello), Rudy the Clown
(Lieutenant Rudolph Hűhnlein) and Lieutenant Reg Williamson, who had at one
time as part of his criminal cover been nicknamed Fur-face Reggie, but objected to
the point where Cardinale thought best to drop it. Cardinale himself, Betsy
(Elizabeth Parris) and Chicago Richie (Lieutenant Robert Campbell Jr., NCG)
provided a third team for emergency backup and scouting.
It was still light out, and they all met in the guise of an after-work picnic
party gathered around a green wooden table at the National Mall, in the shadow of
the Washington Monument. Richie and Betsy arrived to find the picnic table
spread with politically correct quiche, potato salad, and chees